Side Effects
by catsncritters
Summary: HPSS SLASH A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.
1. Confusion

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: PG13  
**Warnings**: SLASH, between Severus Snape and Harry Potter. If you notice, there is quite an age difference as well. If you don't know what slash is, you probably don't want to read this. If you do, and like it, I'd appreciate feedback. Another warning... this is a soulmate potion story. One of _those_. Sigh. The idea won't leave me alone. ::grin:: But I guess there are some who may like this sort of story. And it is destined to have several chapters as well. I really will try to write more of Switched, I swear. ::sheepish::  
**Reviews**: appreciated--but not required. It's always nice to know if I have readers, though.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site (adriennewolterDOTcom/fanfiction). If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted July 30th, 2004**: This is to be chaptered! Finally, right? I'm sure you're sick of the short one-shots I've been writing lately by now. ::winks:: I've made up some stuff for this story about the history of the wizarding world in past centuries. And I think I might've invented the soulmate potion, but as I'm sure someone else has thought of it before me, just be aware that I am _not_ trying to steal anyone's ideas.  
Enjoy!  
**Noted August 7th, 2004**: Aaaaand... the repost. Now this story is rated PG13 and may extend to R, just for safety measures. Rolls eyes Someone reported me for using the word damn in this chapter in several occasions, so I got suspended for a week and the story was removed. Man... I've seen loads worse than that. Seriously. And if I can't cuss in a PG-rated story, what makes PG any different than G? Does PG suddenly have to be just as clean as G? Are they going to expect R-rated stories to be as clean as PG13 or PG? Man, though. A week. I was going crazy. I couldn't work on my websites until yesterday, either. But gah, whatever. It's FFN's rules, not mine. If I get suspended again, you can still find updates at the link above (see archive), once I've finished moving in.  
**Shameless plug**: Check out my JPSS story, To The Grave! :D  
Yes, that is all.

.---.

The effects of leechroot extract on love potions are virtually unexplored.

After the rather primitive Ministry of Magic banned the making and use of love and soulmate potions in the 1400s, the study of them was ended altogether, so many possibilities have been left unknown, or simply hypothesized about. Many witches or wizards with backgrounds in the potionmaking field would be able to say that this is very sad, indeed; there are many potions whose ingredients are similar to love potions', and without much study, can prove dangerous to be mixed.

In the late 1600s, one Esmeralda Furmage fell in love with Seabastian Snape. He was oblivious at best; very interested in Quidditch rather than love, he hardly noticed her small advances on him. This drove Miss Furmage near-mad; in secret she stole an ancient text from the wizarding bookstore down the street from her parent's house and set up to brew a potion in the basement.

There are several distinct differences between a love potion and a soulmate potion; a love potion's effects are widely-known. They are artificial emotions of infatuation created in the potion's drinker towards the creator, which gradually fade over time unless another dose of potion is taken. A soulmate potion is permanent, and that is part of its danger–and it draws the drinker towards their true love, or the one they are singly best compatible with.

Miss Furmage believed herself to be Mister Snape's one true love, and thus brewed the soulmate potion. However, her father was a very mediocre potionmaker, and did not always keep his supplies cleaned. The spoon she used to stir the potion was thinly coated in leechroot extract, a key ingredient in blood binding potions; the extra ingredient changed the effects of the potion dramatically.

This ingredient changed the potion so that it would only go into affect if the drinker truly needed the potion to be guided in the right direction, if they had not already realized their soulmate. Otherwise it would be passed down into one of the next generation and the next, until needed. Such is the permanence of the soulmate potion.

Seabastian Snape had, in fact, discovered his true love already, in a shy and slightly younger Quidditch referee; thus, when they married, the potion was passed onto their only child.

The Snapes were an odd sort of pureblood family, indeed. While most pureblood lines married simply to keep the blood pure, binding certain people to others, the Snapes tried to marry out of love while keeping the blood pure. Thus, the children knew of their freedom and went looking for love early. The potion apparently was not activated if they already harboured feelings for their soulmate or if their soulmate died, and thus was passed down in generations, usually to the first-born child, for several hundred years. It would activate only when the younger of the pair was sixteen, but as it was unneeded for three-hundred years, this wasn't known until it happened.

In Miss Furmage's suicide note, she explained of the potion and did not seem to understand why it didn't work; it became a sort of legend passed down through the Snape family, but never really believed.

.---.

Severus Snape was the last of his blood line, having no siblings and no relatives still living. This had tended to bother him whenever he thought of it; if he married and had an heir, then he would not need to worry about the loss of his bloodline, but he thought that it was rather late now.

The students had been released about a month ago; it was very late July, and he'd spent the first month of vacation compiling OWL and NEWT scores for the fifth and seventh years. Now that they'd been sent, he could spend the last month however he pleased.

Well, not exactly. He still had to worry about restocking Madam Pomfrey's healing potion supplies. Damn the students, for throwing themselves into dangerous situations resulting in injury; if everyone would just be a little more cautious, then they would not need to suffer the additional pains of magical healing.

So it meant days of slaving over multiple bubbling cauldrons, going between one and the others to add ingredients at specific times in specific amounts. He'd become quite talented at multitasking, something many a witch and wizard could not do, especially with potions. Then again, potions didn't make sense to many. As it was, Snape had found his knack in the art while designing a potion for the Dark Lord; very few could design potions, even simple healing ones.

Adding a wormroot knot to a small cauldron of headache cure, he sighed. Of course the Dark Lord had discovered his spying back in the eighties; after his trial, it was pretty obvious that he was on the side of the light. But it didn't mean that he would not torture him sometimes, making his scar burn when he called the others; once, he had summoned the Death Eaters during a Potions class, and Snape had ended up rolling on the floor, shocking his fifth year students. But that had been over ten years ago, and the incident was widely forgotten. Mostly because he had obliviated every student on their way out the door.

Cursing, he realized that it was almost midnight; he'd never liked it when he brewed potions late into the night. It was one of the disadvantages of not having windows, he supposed–not noticing the time. Quickly finishing the round of potions, he bottled them all with a wave of his wand, and cleaned the cauldrons and stirring spoons quickly while replacing his ingredients in the cupboard. He usually did all this by hand, but it was late at night and he really wanted a full six hours of rest before he had to do another day of work.

Somewhere down the hallway, a clock began to chime the twelfth hour, as he unlocked the door to his chamber. He silently looked down towards where the noise was coming from for a moment, lost in thoughts of potion ingredients that he would need to restock, and let himself in. It was still chiming. Eight, nine....

Snape shrugged off his robe, throwing it over to the chest across the room; it folded itself in midair. Ten, as he finished unbuttoning his dress shirt. Eleven, as he threw the shirt over to join the robe. Twelve, as he unzipped his pants, pulling them halfway off.

Midnight.

He suddenly had a very bad headache. Grumbling, he stumbled on his half-on pants on his way to the cabinet for some headache cure. He dropped the wand that had been in his right hand and cursed again, landing painfully on his knees after tripping again. He rolled over on the floor and hit his head painfully on his desk, and clutched it, spewing random Latin cuss words. Ripping the offending pants all the way off so he would no longer trip, he squinted at the floor, the pain in his head half-blinding, feeling around for the wand. His fingertips brushed the frayed end of his dress pants and he jumped, thinking it to be fur. His legs randomly kicked out and connected with the wooden edge of the bed, and at the sudden pain his forehead fell forward into the stones. When he found the wand, he summoned the headache cure, drank it, and banished it back to the cupboard.

And that was that.

Standing up quickly and brushing himself off, he was suddenly glad no one had been here to watch his very graceful stumbling moments before. The pants were sent to the chest and landed neatly on top of the rest of his uniform. Finally in only his boxers, he slid into the bed at last, staring up at the ceiling for a minute before lowering his eyelids, knees still stinging.

_Harry Potter._

The words rang out in Snape's mind as soon as his eyes were shut. Grimacing, he tried to clear his mind of the name he'd come to despise. The boy certainly wasn't a comfort right now, as random body parts were throbbing in the pain of being an idiot while searching for his wand. The name refused to be banished, however, and echoed even louder, if possible. This was certainly odd. Without opening his eyes, he fluffed the pillow, thinking the problem was stemmed from discomfort. Sinking into it, he sighed. _Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

He sat up again, frowning. Reaching into the desk drawer next to the bed, he pulled out some of his own dreamless sleep potion. Carelessly flipping the flask open, he brought it to his lips. He never particularly liked the potion; he'd read one too many a horror story about someone who became addicted to the substance and spent their life rotting in sleep.

There was none left. Damn.

Snape sighed, lying back down. _Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

He rolled over.

An odd image went through his mind then; he was lying in this spot, only there was a figure next to him on this side of the skinny bed. And his arms were around it. What the hell? He hadn't shared a bed with anyone since his fifth or sixth year of school.... Lucius, that was. There was no thin blonde hair, only his own black hair. He couldn't see the hair of the figure.

A pair of glasses were on his desk. Odd, he didn't wear glasses. He nuzzled into the neck of the figure, determined male from the wide shoulders, deciding to make the best of the odd image in his mind. The head turned to smile at him, messy dark hair brushing his forehead.

At first he thought it was James. Well, that would be rather awkward. He rolled back over on his other side, shuddering. The day he slept with James would be the day he dug his own grave, dove in, and summoned the dirt back to cover him. Sure, the man had been handsome, but his arrogance was something else altogether.

Arms wrapped themselves around him, and he looked down at the nails. James had always been one to bite his nails in school, but the nails were neatly cut. Rolling onto his back, he glanced over, right into green eyes. Lily's eyes. No, not Lily's eyes.

_Harry Potter._

At this he jumped two feet and fell out of his bed, landing again on the stone floor. Its cold surface shocked him out of the odd picture in his mind more than anything else, and he realized that he was alone in the room.

Well, yes, that was certainly odd.

After several calming breaths, he crawled cautiously back into his bed, bringing the thin blanket up with him. He stretched before lying back down and closing his eyes. There was a second of nothing, and then the boy materialized next to him again. Damnit! In his mind, he struggled to push Potter away, but his arms wouldn't move. Unable to do anything, he just hopelessly watched as the boy laid his head on his chest, trying to get to sleep. He awkwardly put his arms up around the boy's shoulders, unable to stop the action, and the boy shifted slightly so he was more comfortable.

If his lips would have been able to move in the odd vision, he would've barked at the boy to go back to the Gryffindor tower, but unfortunately he couldn't speak. _He_ certainly wasn't comfortable in this position. The boy had his hand on his thigh. Oh... no! Trying to move away, Snape found that he was frozen in the bizarre dream. Bad... bad....

Sitting up again, he double-checked to make sure he really was out of dreamless sleep potion. The dream–nightmare, rather–dissolved. He was out of the potion. Ugh. He laid back down, squeezing his eyes shut. There he was again. At least he wasn't... doing anything, besides sharing the bed. Well, the boy did have his hand on his inner thigh, but it was just placed there, not really for any purpose. Right? He shuddered again. Why couldn't he clear his mind of this? He'd cleared his mind every damn night for twenty years! _Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

"I know it's Potter, damnit!"

There was an overwhelming silence following his outburst, and he shrunk into the bed more, hoping no one in the hall had heard him. His eyes, now open, were flickering back and forth between what was real and what was a dream.

Oh, no. Ohhh, no.

He boy had crawled on top of him. Oh no. Right now he was just looking into his eyes, but... oh no.

He was being kissed.

And _damn_, it felt good.

Gasping as the boy trailed kisses down his jaw, his eyes fell closed, and he could feel the brush of lips trailing downwards, to his neck. He became aware that his hands were in hair. This couldn't just be some dream, he could feel the weight of Potter on him. And he could feel the messy hair. Potter was back to kissing him. Ohh....

No! He couldn't be _enjoying_ this! Snape rolled over again, but in his mind, he was kissing back. Kissing back? What madness had the world come to? _Harry Potter. Harry Potter._ Shaking, he nervously tried to ignore the rather persistent, pleasant flutter in his stomach. _Harry Potter._ He burrowed under the cover, arms around his head. Potter had his head on his chest again. His hands were still around the boy, back to the shoulders, just resting that way. No... this couldn't be... he shouldn't be finding this comfortable.... Wimpering slightly, he turned his head in the other direction. The boy looked up at him, startled at the odd noise.

He half-fell, half-jumped out of the bed. The image of himself and Harry dissolved. Wait. 'Harry'? Oh dear. That couldn't be right.

_Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

Distantly, muffled by stone walls, he heard a single chime. He'd lost an hour of sleep to this madness already. Snape looked around himself, eyes open, and he tried to detect any magical activity going through his wards. None were present, though. Biting his lip rather guiltily, he looked back up at the bed, before glancing around himself one more time. Well, as long as no one was watching....

He crawled to the edge of the bed, eyes falling shut. The boy still looked surprised. He licked his lips, climbing back onto the bed. Harry–Potter–whoever–had sat up also, and was currently sitting on his knees. Trying to ask why the boy was there, he found himself, again, unable to speak. So, throwing all guilt away for the time being, he leaned forward and brushed his lips over Harry's.

Who smiled into the kiss. Well, that certainly was a surprise. The boy's hands were around his waist. _Harry Potter. Harry Potter._ The words, spoken in a fierce female voice, were slowly beginning to fade. He pushed Harry forward and was on top of him, still trying to kiss him.

Perhaps it was the introduction of the boy's tongue into the kiss, or the hand that was trying to slide off his boxers, but something startled him out of the vision and he left the bed at a rush, Harry dissolving again. Snape roughly put his pants and a t-shirt on and left the room, wide awake, to go to the library. Though he'd escaped the image, the name continued to echo, back to being loud.

He spent the rest of the sleepless night in the library.


	2. Letters

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: PG13  
**Warnings**: SLASH, between Severus Snape and Harry Potter. If you notice, there is quite an age difference as well. If you don't know what slash is, you probably don't want to read this. If you do, and like it, I'd appreciate feedback. Another warning... this is a soulmate potion story. One of _those_. Sigh. The idea won't leave me alone. ::grin:: But I guess there are some who may like this sort of story. And it is destined to have several chapters as well. I really will try to write more of Switched, I swear. ::sheepish::  
**Reviews**: appreciated--but not required. It's always nice to know if I have readers, though.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site (adriennewolterDOTcom/fanfiction). If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: I wrote this while I was suspended, too... I just waited a few days to post - making sure I didn't get suspended again. ::Sheepish:: I'm sorry for the, eh, rather boring bits of this chapter, it leads up to future chapters and shows Harry's side of things. Poor Severus. ::evil grin::

.---.

Harry Potter did his homework silently in his bedroom.

It was almost midnight. He'd not really been paying attention to the date until he'd received an owl with his OWL scores; indeed, his aunt had been very angry at him when a large tawny swooped right through the open window she'd just cleaned, dropped a letter at his feet, and flew back out the window. That was two days ago. He'd been locked in his room since. Although, looking back, he had to admit that he was rather glad to have stashed his books and homework in his room immediately upon arriving back at the Dursley's–he would've driven himself mad with boredom if he didn't have homework to do.

As it was, he'd done homework nonstop for two days. And he only had his Charms essay left to do. It was something he would've, under other circumstances, thought impossible. The Dursleys had forgotten to (or perhaps simply didn't) bring him meals, so he'd had nothing else to do. Hedwig was a comfort, but she'd been gone for several days, off retrieving his birthday presents, he assumed.

That was a wonder in itself. He, Harry Potter, had come to expect birthday gifts. It was something he'd never had for eleven years and suddenly _had_ for several more, and he loved being loved.

Looking up at the digital display, he saw that he had ten minutes until he would turn sixteen. He smiled to himself, looking anxiously towards the open window for a second before deciding to write one more paragraph of his charms essay and call it quits.

As he crossed a T and finished a sentence, he heard a squeal and a whoop from near the ceiling. Jumping and holding onto his ink so it wouldn't spill over the side of the bed, he glanced upwards to see a small blur that had to be Pigwidgeon. Giving a wry grin, he quickly put his essay on the bedside table, reached up, and caught the owl mid-swoop to take the letter tied to its leg.

The letter was tied in a tight roll with two pieces of string. Eyebrows lowering in curiosity, he pulled them and unrolled it, surprised when quite a lot of Muggle candy spilled out, having been shrunk so the tiny owl could carry them. Stomach grumbling, he unwrapped one of the Mars Bars while starting the letter.

_Hey Harry,  
Dad's got loads of this sitting around, and he's given us all a bag of it. Muggle candy, apparently. I don't much like the stuff, and since there's so much of it around here anyway, I figured you might want some.  
Anyway, summer's pretty uneventful around here. Well, somewhat. Hermione's been here for about a week. Percy came home, too. He and Dad are still really tense around one another, but at least they're not rowing every time they see each other. Haven't talked to Percy all that much though, he's been in a right sour state since Fudge fired him. Holed up in his room and all._

At this sentence, Harry frowned. Percy, fired?

_And we're going to be bringing you back to the Burrow on your birthday. We already got the okay from Dumbledore. He's going to send someone from the Order to pick you up and bring you here. Then we can celebrate your birthday properly, eh?_

The previous paragraph was forgotten and Harry's heart soared in his chest; he'd spent a month in this house, alienated among the rest of his relatives, sulking about Sirius' death–he read the paragraph again to be sure that he hadn't misunderstood. A birthday party? He grinned to himself, Pigwidgeon hooting from the bedside table. A birthday party. He would be having a birthday party.

_In any case, that's why I haven't really sent a gift along. Hermione and a few others have gifts for you too, you'll get them all that night.  
Ron_

Harry unwrapped another candy bar, discarding the first's wrapper; scooping the rest of the candy, he put it next to Pig. Looking up at the window again, he saw that Hedwig had arrived, along with another owl that looked very much like a school owl.

He took the letter from the school owl first, smiling when he recognized the handwriting on the cake box that it carried. Unrolling the letter from Hagrid, he quickly scanned the letter and smiled again.

It was now past midnight, Harry noticed, looking at the clock again. He was sixteen. Grinning, he took Hedwig's letter as the school owl swooped away. Hedwig had a letter from Hermione, and had obviously followed Pig along from the Burrow, as she looked like she was trying to tolerate the overly-hyper little thing.

_Harry,  
You've probably read Ron's letter already, Pigwidgeon tends to demand attention. Like Ron, I'm waiting to give you your gift until you arrive. I can't wait until you get here–Ron's been avoiding me whenever I mention OWLs. Did you get your scores? What of them? I've gotten all Outstandings, so I think I'll keep taking all my classes. I still haven't decided on a career option, although healing does have some appeal.  
Have you seen the Prophet lately? They're in absolute hysterics over some missing St. Mungos patients, been theorizing for a week already. I'll show you some of the less idiotic articles soon. Happy birthday!  
Love,  
Hermione_

Frowning slightly, he put Hermione's letter on top of Ron's and pulled his trunk out from under the bed. Deciding to start packing tonight, he dumped the candy in, and carefully put Hagrid's cake in, followed by the letters. Harry glanced around the room to check for anything he wanted to take, and then spent a few minutes throwing his summer homework and textbooks in.

Hermione's letter forgotten, he saw that it was nearing a quarter after midnight. Smiling, he quickly fell asleep, wondering what his birthday party would be like.

It was already seven in the morning before anyone other than Madam Pince discovered Snape in the library. Dumbledore had simply been walking by to go to the Great Hall, and saw his Potions Master through the windows that faced the hallway; curious, he was sitting across from him before Snape even realized his presence.

"Research, Severus?" When he got no answer, he continued. "What's troubling you?" The Potions Master looked up at him, eyes tired. "Have you been in here all morning?" He was concerned for the man's health, certainly. The thought would've made Snape snort had the circumstances been different.

"I'm looking up odd dreams," he said vaguely, looking back down at his book. The text swam before him, and he blinked his eyes a few times to try and clear the drowsiness off. "I've been in here since about one." He quickly scrubbed at his eyes.

Dumbledore looked down at the page heading skeptically. "'The Aftereffects of Bonding'? What sort of dream was this, Severus?"

"You'd be kidding yourself if you think you have no idea what's going on," the man across from him said through gritted teeth, turning a page.

Innocently, "I would?"

In annoyance, Snape stopped trying to read and looked up at the headmaster, eyes having trouble focusing for a second. "Around midnight I got a very strong headache. No, exactly midnight, actually. After taking a headache cure, a female voice continually repeated someone's name, and, furthermore, that particular someone materialized next to me in bed." Snape sneered. "It surprised me. I struggled to keep them away, I didn't really have much control over my own actions in this dream. After an hour of nonsense, I came here."

A minute of consideration. "I see." Dumbledore picked up his book and looked at the table of contents, losing Snape's page. "Well, this certainly won't help you." He set it down on top of the man's rather large accumulation of other useless books. "If you may, can you recall the story you told me the first time you returned from Voldemort as a spy? You were in the hospital wing...."

Snape rose an eyebrow in irritation. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Do you remember?"

"I don't see–" He fell into silence. "You mean." Dawning comprehension was covered in horror. "No. It's not true. It was just a story!"

Dumbledore stretched. "Believe it or not, Miss Esmeralda Furmage and Mister Seabastian Snape were real beings, and though some points are rather exaggerated, that story is very true. I looked it up shortly after you told me," the headmaster explained. "So, may I ask, who was this someone?"

Snape's head had sunk into his arms on top of the table. "You know you already know," was muffled by his robesleeves.

"Of course. I want to hear you admit it to yourself, actually."

There was a stretch of silence.

"My soulmate is Harry Potter," was the muffled reply. He was pressing his closed eyes into his arm so hard that white spots were appearing among the pitch-black.

"Better," Dumbledore told him, reseating himself and smiling. "You know, Mister Potter really isn't all that–"

"I do not want to hear about it right now, Albus."

A white eyebrow rose in amusement over half-moon spectacles. "I assure you, Severus, that I wouldn't mind if you were to feel any attraction towards Harry." He spoke over protests from the Potions Master. "While I do not approve of student-teacher relationships, I feel that you surely would not push him into anything either of you would regret–"

"Please, Albus," Snape said as he sat back up, eyes closed. "You're speaking as if I'm going to actually–" he couldn't find the appropriate word. "As if we're going to–" He cut himself off again. "It's not going to happen, Albus. Just leave it."

The headmaster smiled gently, standing. "Alright. I'll leave you to think about it." And he left.

Snape sunk back into his arms so quickly that his head hit the table. Subconsciously, he'd known that it would be some awful magical thing, but he hadn't been thinking of the... _story_. He'd been imagining some bond, which someone powerful as himself or Albus could easily break, as he knew that Potter's sixteenth birthday had been today. That was the time when bonds were usually made visible.

But a soulmate potion... hell.

Soulmate potions were unusual. They really were supposed to do no more than make it obvious to the targeted person who their soulmate was. But... they weren't meant to bring visions of that person. It should have just been the voice.

Faintly, in the back of his mind, he heard it. _Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

_That_ was supposed to be the only purpose of the potion. Sitting back up again, eyes closed, he went back on the details of the story in his head. She'd... leechroot extract. Leechroot extract. Unusual potions ingredient, certainly. What could Mr. Furmage have been doing with leechroot extract that his daughter could've gotten enough directly into her potion to make such a huge difference? He frowned. Very few potions used the ingredient, especially in such large amounts. It was a side ingredient, the only potion that really used it as a key... blood binding potions.

But he certainly wasn't bound to Potter. That, he knew right off. He'd poured over too many bond texts to have missed something that would make it possible. In his head he attempted to recite, from memory, the effects of some potions in that category. None really seemed to... visual reminders. Ah, yes. That was something controlled by the leechroot. This was just great.

And... Potter was his soulmate? There was something so very wrong about that statement, something so bloody ironic about it that made him want to pull away from the thought altogether. Soulmate. One of two persons completely compatible with the other. But that would mean also that he, Severus Snape, was Potter's soulmate. How was that even remotely possible? They certainly weren't compatible in the least; whenever they were in each other's presence, they bickered.

And there was one more problem. He hated Potter, and the feeling was very much mutual. And now he would be drawn to the boy. Damn. And 'visually reminded' of their relation every night. He blanched. Another night of that would be something, but that every night? Bloody hell, that was something entirely different. That was plain torture.

What of the Dark Lord, too? That would probably go over well, if he found out from Potter's weak mind that his soulmate was _actually_ the Potions Master he so despised. And being Gryffindor, the boy would probably go after him if the Dark Lord captured him, simply because he was so stupid.

There was only one way to be sure that Potter remained safe. He couldn't know that Snape was his soulmate.


	3. Ghost

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: PG13.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating might have to go to R, because I'm planning the afteraffects of violence on another character. Watch the warnings in the future.  
**Reviews**: appreciated--but not required. It's always nice to know if I have readers, though.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: Tada! I present to you... chapter three. Enjoy. Sorry it's so short, but the next chapter will likely be longer. I would like to thank my reviewers thus far. You keep my ego up. ;D  
Oh, and good news for Switched readers - I'm about a third to halfway done with chapter eighteen. Finally, right? ::coughs:: Sorry 'bout that.

.---.

The Dursleys had agreed far too readily to his leaving this year for Harry to not be suspicious; it had seemed like, over the years, they had come to enjoy making his summers hell. He'd packed and dragged his trunk downstairs, stacking on top of it Hedwig's cage, and double-checked for homework and books already, and had not heard anything resembling a challenge from his uncle. In fact, the Dursleys had practically ignored him, although his aunt had given him a plate of bacon. Assuming it was only because they didn't want to have to answer about why he was starving, he ate it quickly enough.

He saw why they had been so ready to let him leave when he entered the kitchen to put his plate into the sink. Seated at the table, trying to talk to his cousin, was Tonks. Her hair was currently pink with blue tips, and she was describing Quidditch animatedly to the fat boy, who seemed more frightened than interested.

"Hey Harry!" She'd gestured to the seat next to her, across from Dudley, twirling her wand between the fingers of her other hand absently. "We have another ten minutes until the portkey can be activated. You're lucky it's just me picking you up, if Moody could've come along, he'd have us taking five or six portkeys. How was your summer?"

"Okay," Harry told her, taking the bacon that his cousin wasn't eating and feeding it to Hedwig through the bars of her cage. "Are you staying at the Burrow for my–my birthday party?"

"Of course," she told him, grinning and waving it off. "Remus will be there... let's see... all the Weasleys, of course...."

A ragged, worn-out-looking hat in the middle of the table that Harry hadn't even noticed coughed, smoke or dirt appearing from an open patch in the side. Dudley had snuck out of the room several minutes before, so they were left alone in the room with the wheezing hat.

"Ah, take hold of your stuff, portkey's ready," she told him, shrinking his trunk. They took hold of the hat and in several seconds they were in the yard of the Weasley's house, chickens squawking and heading in separate directions away from where they'd arrived. Grinning, Harry let Hedwig out of her cage as Tonks apparated elsewhere, and ran to meet Ron, who was waving in his direction.

The redhead looked excited, but Hermione, sitting several feet away on a broken lawn chair, sniffed and half turned away, going back to her book. Confused, Harry glanced back at Ron, who seemed to have either not noticed or not cared. "How was the month with the Muggles, mate?"

"What's wrong with Hermione?" he asked, shrugging at his friend's question.

"Ron simply insists on bringing up the past at every chance he gets!" Hermione snapped irritably.

Ron yelled over his shoulder, just as sourly, "When you're trying to ignore people, you don't yell out answers to the questions they are being asked!"

Caught on the side, Harry scratched his head. He quickly searched for some topic that might draw attention away from the bickering about to occur. "How's Percy?"

Temporarily distracted by the question and caught off-guard, Ron turned back to Harry. "He's alright, I guess. Locks himself in his room a lot of the time though, we don't really know what he does in there...."

"Ah," Harry managed to say before Hermione yelled out another insult. Sighing, he turned and went inside, deciding that he'd leave the two to their own devices and hope they didn't kill one another.

Immediately upon entering, he found himself trapped in a hug from Mrs. Weasley. Smiling, he greeted her and her husband, then looked around at the rest of the Weasleys. Bill and Charlie gave him a wave before going back to talking to the twins, who hadn't noticed him yet. Ginny greeted him in passing, having seen that her brother was fighting with Hermione, muttering. Catching a small movement out of the corner of his eye, Harry looked beyond the huddled group of brothers, through the arch-doorway, and saw what he at first thought was a ghost standing in the hallway.

It was Percy. The man looked like hell; pale and sickly-looking, Harry saw the very edge of a bruise sticking out of his sleeve, at his wrist. A newer, only slightly-faded one resided on a cheekbone, and the freckles so familiar to Harry had seemed to disappear. His clothes looked well-worn but not messy; they were obviously business clothes, and he wondered what had happened to Percy's wonderful job at the Ministry.

As if seeing Harry looking at him, he tugged at his sleeve cuff and turned his head slightly so both bruises were no longer visible, though never looking up at him. The raven-haired boy immediately felt a wave of pity for the man, looking so alienated from his family; he'd never been particularly close to him, but what stood ten feet away from him, across the room, was a broken man.

"Harry!"

His eyes were momentarily ripped from the awful sight to the twins, who had at last noticed him. Giving them a small smile, he glanced again into the hallway, but Percy had left; he walked up to the table and had a brief conversation with the twins about their growing business before Remus and Tonks arrived. Percy was all but forgotten when Mrs. Weasley deemed it time to begin his party.

- - - -

The day had been a trying one; Severus seemed to feel flashes of emotion that shouldn't have been there. Occurrences like that made him paranoid. Several times through the day he'd felt them–suspicion, joy which quickly changed to exasperation, and an enormous amount of pity; the problem with these was that they were entirely unconnected to whatever he happened to be doing at the time. Thus, he'd reluctantly gone to see the headmaster.

He'd been halfway through a particularly plausible theory having to do with the Dark Lord and the Mark on his arm before Albus had stopped him and told him it was simply a side effect of the soulmate potion.

"I've thought about it, and talked to some of your relative's portraits," Albus had told him, causing him to scowl. "Certainly there are more side effects than the visions of Harry with you in bed." Albus' voice sounded far too amused for Severus' liking. The way he had said 'bed'... best not to think about that, however. "You'll just need to find them. Potionmaking that long ago, with no research or records... could mean anything."

"Lovely," he'd responded shortly.

"I believe that the emotions you're feeling are excess from Mister Potter. You'll get used to it," the headmaster told him, looking down at a stack of parchments, a sure indication that it was time to leave. Severus was in the dungeons before he allowed himself to go over the thoughts in his head.

He seated himself warily on the edge of his bed, checking for Potters before he turned his attention to taking off his boots and socks. Flashes of emotion... another bloody connection to Potter. It had been stupid, to assume that leechroot would be the only ingredient on the stirring spoon Miss Furmage had used–surely there were various other ingredients as well. And blood binding potions had so many purposes that the combination of ingredients put into the soulmate potion could have come from any one of a family of potions. There were blood binding potions for friendship, love, and arranged marriages; there were varieties intended to make the target unable to attack the drinker, by including a drop of blood from the target. Had there been blood on the stirring spoon? Severus frowned, a crease forming on his forehead. It wouldn't matter if the spoon had been removed before the blood was added, as there usually was no need to stir blood in. However, if there had been even a drop of blood that found its way into the soulmate potion....

There were fingers in his hair.

_Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

He squeezed his eyes shut. This did very little, just made the boy visible; he could still see the room, the lamp that glittered near his door. Severus took a minute to investigate the odd experience, looking around at the room with lidded eyes, opening his eyes and seeing no change. He could feel his eyes being closed, but it was as though he could see right through them....

_Don't you ever wash this?_ He would've jumped three feet into the air at the joking words, had they not rooted him to the spot–he could feel the boy's warm breath on his ear, and there were so many levels of discomfort going through him at that feeling. Visual reminders... this couldn't have been simply visual. He could feel Potter, _hear_ him....

_Harry Potter. Harry Potter._

He remembered his lack of dreamless sleep potion.

"Shit."

_Severus?_

Severus looked at the boy's–Potter's–Harry's?–face out of the corner of his eye. The green eyes were asking him the question; in fact, it didn't look like the boy's lips were even moving. Was it possible that Harry–damn it, _Potter_–was speaking to him through thought?

Deciding to test the possibility, he tried to say something. _Why are you here?_

He heard his own voice! Had he accidentally spoken rather than simply thought the words, or was–

_I thought you wanted me here._

Taken aback, he tried to scoot down the bed, but found that he couldn't control his own movement without opening his eyes. With his eyes open, the vision disappeared, though he could still feel the boy as he slid several centimeters towards the pillows. But when he closed them again, Severus was still seated in the same place on the edge of the bed.

"No–"

Harry–the word sounded foreign to his mind, but it was annoying, correcting his thoughts–didn't seem to have heard him, and instead reached around his shoulders to unbutton his shirt, rather clumsily. The way the boy seemed to fit against him, like two pieces of a puzzle, alarmed him–as did the slow-to-come realization that the boy was undressing him.

_But we hate one another, H–Potter._

A soft laugh, and he found himself leaning back into the boy, the other puzzle piece, feeling suddenly exhausted as he unzipped his pants and kicked them off. He was too tired to even care that neither his shirt nor his pants were being folded neatly across the room. _You'll see in time, Severus._


	4. Party

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: PG13.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating might have to go to R, because I'm planning the afteraffects of violence on another character (and you can probably guess who right now, even without this chapter...). Watch the warnings in the future.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: Chapter four... slightly longer this time. :D  
Oh, and good news for Switched readers - Halfway done with chapter eighteen... should probably have it up right after FFN gets back from read-only mode (read the August 12th news thingy for more info).  
Thanks to my reviewers. :) Hey, have ya'll seen the NAF beta feature thingy? It's awesome. If you haven't, log in and read about it. :D

(Immortal Memories - There'll be a chapter or two more of Percy, but there's a purpose. I assure you that this will end up being HPSS. [Doesn't it suck when you're reading a story that the author says is one pairing, and halfway through they decide to make it something else? Not going to happen with any of my stories.] Everyone makes Percy out to be a bastard now because of book five. I'm going to turn the tables a bit. ;) )

.---.

Tranquil silence was something Severus had grown used to.

It came from years of being seen as a traitor by everyone, seen as the 'bad guy' by both sides. Years of secluding himself from the world that might try to hurt him–because he already knew that doing such was not above them. No, he had spied and worked for the good cause for almost two decades. He'd done the world a favour, whether they knew it–whether they _wanted_ to know it–or not. And yet, any way he looked at it, he would always be on the losing side. After the war, no one would think to clear the ex-spy's name, of course. He fought his battles, tamed his demons behind the scenes, and he'd reached the point that he really didn't care if he was accepted or not.

He rolled over, finding himself face to face with James Potter. He itched to close his eyes, but they were already shut. Curses. No, he finally chided himself, this was–Harry. He wondered why it felt so wrong to be calling the boy by something other than his surname. Maybe because someday in class, he might slip. After all, he'd be sleeping with–no, sharing a bed with–the Gryffindor every night until he either found some way to banish the vision, or–here he shuddered–replaced it with the real thing.

Ha, like that was going to happen.

Eyes still closed, but able to see through them, Severus studied the boy's face idly. Messy hair somewhat covered up the eyes that were currently shut, and he realized that there were no glasses. A quick glance over his shoulder proved the glasses to be on the bedside cabinet, but they disappeared along with the boy when his eyes were open. Interesting.

Feeling drained and exhausted, he tried to make himself more comfortable by fluffing the pillows. It did very little. Perhaps the hardest thing to accept, and the easiest thing to get used to, would be the fact that he could hear both himself and the raven-haired boy's breathing.

He held his breath as Harry shifted, nuzzling closer into his chest. It was... comfortable? Not exactly. But nonetheless, he smiled down at the boy's head, tired, and tried again to get to sleep.

- - - -

Harry's birthday party was small, and that was the way he liked it. He would've felt uncomfortable, for instance, if the entire Order had been invited, since he didn't know very many of them well enough to be able to relax in their presence. But having the Weasleys, Tonks, and Remus was different, and preferable; the Weasleys were his second family, Tonks was just easy to like, and Remus was like a second godfather.

And it was that thought that made him feel guilty–no one had dared trying to mention Sirius since his arrival. He was ready to talk about him now, to smile at good memories... but no one else would bring it up first, and he knew that they wouldn't like it if he brought it up. The Weasleys were his generous hosts to his very first birthday party–he would not ruin it by sulking about.

So, drawing up all the happiness he could, he acted as joyful as possible. Soon, however, he found that he didn't have to act.

After talking to numerous Weasleys, Mrs. Weasley directed his attention to the living room, and he was the last to wander in, still talking to Remus; when he caught sight of the room, he couldn't say a word.

Gryffindor-colored streamers and paper chains hung in the corners. Mr. Weasley seemed to be trying to catch his eye, unsure about the Muggle decorations he'd surely put up himself. Harry grinned at him to show his appreciation, before his eyes fell on the teetering stack of gifts precariously placed on the skinny coffee table.

"Go ahead, open one," Ron told him, grinning just as widely as Harry. Embarrassed, he took a parcel off the top of the pile, taking a seat on the floor like most of the other guests, and turning it over to look at the card on the front.

Written in her familiar, neat scrawl was a note from Hermione.

_I thought this might come in handy. You never know. I wasn't really sure what to get you, so I kind of put these together. Happy birthday!  
Love, Hermione_

He ripped the paper open anxiously; the thing that caught his eye as it fell out was a small, black leather-covered journal, along with several quills, an empty ink well, and an eraser. Tucked inside the journal was another note.

_Sorry if it's too girly for your tastes. There's actually ink in that bottle–invisible ink. You can read what you wrote later with the eraser, if you'd like._

"Thanks, Hermione!" he said at once, and was pleased to find her smiling, sitting next to Ron again. Maybe they were trying to get along just for him, but he was glad they had at least reached some kind of agreement.

Several gifts later, including free gift cards from the twins to their joke shop and an updated copy of _Quidditch Through the Ages_ signed by the Chudley Cannons from Ron, Harry found Tonks' gift.

"Those are my old training books," she told Harry excitedly, and he found several auror-related texts. "Since Fudge is Minister now, some of them have been banned for the types of magic in them. I heard about your DA group, thought you might like some more advanced spells on hand." Tonks' enthusiasm rubbing off on him, Harry found that he was not at all disappointed from the gift, which consisted basically of textbooks; he grinned and thanked her.

And on the gift-opening went. Harry felt like he was making his onlookers impatient by his thorough inspection of each gift, but he figured that he'd just take his time, it was his first birthday party, after all.

The present on the very bottom of the stack was skinny and book-shaped, and Harry glanced at Hermione to see if she had anything to do with giving him a book. Her face was as curious as his own, however, so he glanced down at the card.

It was from Remus.

He ripped off the paper carefully, staring at the gift for a second before he looked back in front of him, this time at Remus, giving him a short stare, before his eyes went back to the gift.

It was a Hogwarts yearbook. He hadn't even known they existed; perhaps they were done away with before he'd started his schooling? But there it was, in front of him, maroon-coloured leather cover proclaiming it to be such; a look at the spine of the book showed it to be from the 1977-78 school year.

There was a note inside the cover, similarly to Hermione's gift.

_Happy birthday, Harry. This was Sirius'; I found it while cleaning about a month ago. I figured he would want you to have it._

"Wow, Remus... thank you," he told the man, flashing an appreciative smile before setting it with his other gifts.

The gift-giving complete, Molly Weasley happily herded everyone out to the dining room again; Harry talked to several more people and then sat on his own, basking in the warm feeling of a party thrown just for him. Surveying the guests, it was several minutes later, at least, that he realized that someone was missing.

Of course Percy hadn't appeared. It was stupid to think he might; he didn't get along with his family well, after all, did he? Not anymore. Looking around, he filled a plate with some pork roast and potatoes, then slipped up the stairs to look for Percy.

He'd never been in the man's room before. Harry had never had any reason to wander inside, or bother him while he was in there; therefore, it was with self-consciousness that he straightened his t-shirt before knocking softly.

There was an entire minute of nothing, and Harry began to wonder if he should knock again, when the door opened a very small amount. "Ah... Mister Potter."

Confused at the formality, the boy shrugged. "May I come in?"

"Yes, of course, sorry about that...." Percy stepped back from the door, eyes cast downwards. "Can you close it then? Thanks."

Harry stood awkwardly, momentarily pausing to take in the room. No lights were on, and the room was made only somewhat less dim by a flickering candle, burned down into a stub. It was a very plain room; there was a bed, a desk, and a chair. Two closet doors across the room were the only other thing of interest. Hearing Percy cough, Harry jumped and offered the plate. "I didn't see you at dinner, so I brought you this."

Eyes never leaving the floor, Percy silently accepted it, poking at the pork and still saying nothing.

This went on for about five minutes, until someone knocked on the door and then entered without waiting for an answer. "Harry! We were looking all over for you, you're missing your own party!"

The twins came in together, and one–George–glanced over enough to see Percy. It occurred to Harry that Percy, in his dark pants and white shirt, rather blended in with the black surroundings of his room. "Oh. Why're you with him?"

It wasn't his words, but rather his tone of voice and the skepticism in George's eyes when he asked the question that made Harry feel suddenly sour. The sneer on his face, the cold edge in his eyes.... Could someone as perfect as Percy make a mistake and actually be forgiven, even by their own family? Especially by their own family? "What, am I not allowed to be?" Percy poked at the food still like nothing was being said about him, as though he hadn't even noticed his brothers' entrance. He seemed so distant....

"Oh, come _on_," George replied, rolling his eyes. Fred stayed in the background, closer to the door, looking out the window. Harry wondered at that; was he just as bad as George? Or did he have regrets? "Surely you can find some more enjoyable company, Harry."

"Go ahead," Percy told him monotonously, the first words he'd said since the twin's entrance.

Harry, disgusted, stepped in front of the twin in question, giving him a long, cold stare. "When did you stop caring about your family, George?"

The addressed's eyes flashed. "I never stopped caring about my family."

"And what is Percy, a wild animal? He's your brother," he spat, giving the redhead a shove towards the door. "I'll spend my birthday party in the company of people who don't disgust me if I damn well feel like it."

Fred shot him a blank glance as he followed the fuming form of George out, which Harry interpreted as a sort of gratitude. He didn't turn back to Percy until the door was shut, and when it was, he suddenly had no clue what to say. The raven-haired boy found himself frustrated at the man; how could he just let them insult him? And damn it, why wouldn't he look up at him?

"Thanks, Mister Potter," he said quietly.

"Why am I Mister Potter now?" Harry asked, and found himself full of questions. Why won't you look at me? Why do you have so many bruises?

What _happened_ to you, Percy?

"You can call me Harry, you know."

"I'm sorry I wasn't downstairs for your party," the man said, finally pushing the plate away. It looked like he hadn't taken more than two bites of it–only picked at it until it became a mushy ball of baked potato and pork. "I didn't think you'd want me there." And his eyes rose for a fraction of a second, and their dullness confirmed Harry's earlier assumption–Percy was a broken man.

But he wouldn't ask, just yet. Years of prude questions had taught him that he wouldn't get an answer, or worse, would be lied to, if he were to ask; it was Percy's business and his answer to keep. But the Gryffindor in him made a silent promise that he'd make himself someone who Percy could talk to, since he obviously couldn't talk to his family.


	5. Self Sacrifice

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R, now. Things are going to explained, and yes, there will be implied violence. _I_ personally would give this chapter a very high PG13, but since I've learned that FFN doesn't like the way I rate, I'm being safe.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R, so please do not disregard it.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: This is a _long_ chapter for this story. Longest yet. Much of it is Harry's point of view, but soon they will be back at Hogwarts and Severus will come into play. (evil grin I have some lovely scenes planned, too.) I have this very strong feeling that Harry is a bit out-of-character in this chapter, and I'm sorry for that. I'll try to get chapter six out within a week. Want to hear back from my beta about eighteen of Switched, and if they don't reply within the next day or so, I think I'll post it. It's been unupdated for far too long. O.o

Katie Lupin Black - Percy won't be a big part of this story for much longer, don't worry - after all, he is not going to be at Hogwarts, and they are back in their sixth year by chapter seven. He is mainly there for plot development - I can't reveal too much of what plot he develops right now, but it will have to do with the current events of the wizarding world and inspiring your (the reader's) emotions towards a particular political figure. And no, there won't be any Harry/Percy in this story. :)

xikum - That's actually what I intend to do... three different plot lines, but they tie in together. At least that's what I'm aiming for. I don't know, while reading the canon books I get weird ideas and they come out in my fan fiction quite a lot. O.o Percy's situation was actually inspired by some book five stuff.

Harry-Snape - Harry doesn't feel any "pull" to Severus because the potion in Severus is not a bond, only a potion meant to make it clear to _him_ who his soulmate is. Don't worry though, Harry will eventually get pulled into the mess. :D

And thank you to the other reviewers who I did not reply to. :)

_Note: I have decided, because of several reviews concerning it, that in this story the Marauders will in fact all be Gryffindor - some good points were brought up, and while it is never stated in the canon that they in fact_ _were_ ALL _in Gryffindor (everyone assumed this, but it's never been said - think about prefects. In book five, Ron was the male Gryffindor 5th year prefect. There can't be two in the same year. However, Remus was prefect in Snape's memory - and then James was Head Boy. Who knows, JKR's made mistakes before. ::shrug::), I've rethought it and decided that this story won't be delving into the many possibilities concerning that. Therefore, I've changed it. You may go back and read that if you'd like - no other parts of the text have been edited._

**-Chapter Five-**

A frown brought creases to Severus' forehead as he recalled the date, checking off his list for Madam Pomfrey. How could a fortnight have gone by so quickly? Time always seemed so... slow in the summer months. Two months without any solid schedule, which many teachers spent at home or on vacation; two months during which one could do anything they wished without having to teach incompetent students or grade sketchy papers. And yet, this summer, or perhaps just these two weeks, had gone in a blur.

This feeling of helplessness as time sped by might be a sign of old age. Raising his cup of coffee to his mouth while he waited five minutes for the potion to simmer, he smirked. Severus certainly wasn't getting old, and he knew it. Albus wasn't dead yet, and he was at least four times older than himself. Perhaps it was a fluke of nature, but it seemed that well-liked or important wizards aged slower than the general populace. Smirk fading at this thought, he decided that he'd better get to writing his will one of these days.

No, more likely it was another random emotion provided to him through his sudden connection–or hyper-awareness?–to Harry's feelings. So many times in the past few weeks he had found himself feeling awed or rather lonely out of nothing. It was all very unusual to him.

But there were still another two weeks and he intended to enjoy them, so best not to think about that particular crisis at the moment.

Leaning his chair on two legs against the wall, he propped his feet up on the desk, next to which his potion was still simmering. A glance at the clock across the room told him that there were still another two minutes before the potion would be ready for the next ingredient. Severus sighed contentedly, eyes half-lidded; this was where he was most comfortable, in his private potions lab where there were no Longbottoms to blow up cauldrons, no Grangers to do the Longbottoms' work, no Potters to....

When he closed his eyes, his seat slammed forward with a jolt. _Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Harry._

His eyes flew open, though it did very little. "Damnit, boy, what are you doing here?"

The vision couldn't hear him, of course. With a grunt, he translated the sentence into thought.

_I was bored._

Harry was on his knees, leaning on his arms on the opposite side of the desk. He had his glasses on for once, and looked exactly the same as Severus remembered the Gryffindor looking when he left Hogwarts a month and a half ago. Which, he had to admit, was explainable, since the potion apparently projected a mental image of the boy to him.

_So you came to visit._ Grinning, the boy nodded.

Severus, however, was not quite as baffled or frustrated as he would have been two weeks or so before; then, he would have demanded that the boy leave. Now, he was simply annoyed.

Then, he realized something peculiar.

_Why're you visible even though my eyes are open?_

The boy shrugged. _Guess you've gotten used to me._

_So, what, are you randomly going to start appearing in my classes and demanding attention?_

The potion next to him boiled over, and Severus' attention went to the potion, trying to fix it for several minutes before vanishing it. Agitated and prepared to yell at the boy for distracting him, he found that the vision had disappeared when he turned back.

It was true, he mused as he set up a new cauldron to redo the potion, he had grown used to the boy. The random reflection of the vision's counterpart's emotions still sometimes affected him, but for the most part, he'd learned to ignore them. The angry voice in his head that repeated the name tended to flicker or disappear altogether–or drop the Gryffindor's surname. But it was the vision itself that he had most gotten used to, even though it still scared him sometimes–sharing the bed wasn't awkward at all anymore; it was comfortable, even.

And that was the thing that bothered him most about this situation.

Severus had begun to think. Perhaps, since they _were_ soulmates, after all, there would be some way to make the boy understand, after all? It was a _horrible_ and potentially dangerous thought, made worse by the fact that Albus supported it wholeheartedly–so he'd certainly be using any means to put the two in the most awkward and suggesting situations he could manage.

Bastard.

But that thought would have to wait. That would be too much change–too much against him–to even consider risking. Besides, he didn't even want....

He sighed, staring down at his reflection in the Pepperup Potion. Years of potionmaking had given his hair a sort of limpness, the result of being splashed with too many unidentifiable substances. Shaking his head, he smirked down into the potion as he added powdered boomslang skin. Then, he stopped smirking, studying the reflection intently again. He looked like another person when he wasn't smirking. Younger, too. Hmm.

Well, Severus mused, leaning back into his chair, he didn't want to share that discovery with anyone, especially the Potter boy, of all people. If Albus was going to try and get them together, he was going to thwart it as much as possible.

_Besides, what good could possibly come from it?_ he asked himself, sighing.

_Your happiness, Severus_, came the voice of the vision. He didn't look up to see if Harry was there again or not, feeling suddenly very empty.

**-scene switch-**

**[A/N: Ugh, my dashes between scene/time changes just aren't staying. You'll see something between them, but I have no idea what it will be.]**

Harry sighed, looking around the trunk of the tree that he was sitting in the shadow up at the Weasley house. He had taken to sitting under this tree every afternoon, thinking. It was difficult, dividing time between Ron, Hermione, and brief meal-long visits to Percy. He couldn't really understand it... somehow, Percy fascinated him. Maybe it was the thrill of the mystery, but something drew him to defy the twins. He had not been on speaking terms with George since, and since the twins rarely were seen separated, Fred hadn't spoken to him either except for brief words in passing.

But it was tiring. With Ron, he pretended there was nothing wrong with the world. They stuck to safe topics, of Quidditch and girls and Hogwarts. The two would skirt around anything controversial, anything depressing, and he generally felt artificially happy while it lasted.

Hermione's constant talk of success and NEWT classes got tiring, but at least they approached the topic of Voldemort's rising power–and poured through articles on the St. Mungo's break-ins, disappearances, and murders. Brainstorming and approaching it from several viewpoints, Harry had begun to understand something of what was happening around him... and he didn't like it.

It made no sense.

The hospital patients that disappeared were an extremely varied bunch. So many different personalities and types of people were reported missing or murdered that there really was no connection. Though patrols had been stationed around the hospital and security was made much more strict, it changed nothing. There really seemed to be no reason, no connection to it all... just mindless brutality.

Harry kicked out at a garden gnome that was trying to sneak past him, and stood, brushing himself off. Ron and Hermione were on opposite sides of the yard, the former flying around on a broom and the latter reading on the garden porch; the raven-haired boy sighed. Their momentary cooperation had been just for him and for that he was grateful, but this... was so prolonged. And he had yet to hear what had happened to spur such nonsense.

Deciding that he'd take some lunch up to Percy, he made his way to the kitchen, stealing off with two plates of rice and glasses of water. Each stair creaked as he put his weight on it, and by the time he got to Percy's floor, the man had already been standing in the doorway, having heard his noisy way there.

"Hey Percy," he greeted, offering one of the plates. The other boy took it, nodding in thanks, and backed up far enough to allow Harry entrance. This was routine; he'd been visiting every day with a meal or two for the boy. He needed to eat some to rid his skin of its stretched-over-bones appearance. Smiling to the redhead, he took a seat on the desk chair while Percy sat on the bed.

While his stay here had proven that Ron and Hermione could each manage to talk about the same things every time they conversed, Percy was more varied, when he spoke at all. It had indeed taken days to get the man to idly chat, even with the fewest words here and there; and it had been a rather pleasant surprise to Harry that when he ran out of things to talk about, Percy started to take over, saying a bit more, sharing a bit more.

"They getting along again yet?"

Harry laughed. "Of course not. Have you heard them bickering?" he paused a second in thought. "Well, probably not. But bugger–they're at each others' _throats_. And I still haven't the faintest idea _why_."

Percy snorted around a mouthful of rice. After swallowing, he spoke. "They haven't told you yet?" At Harry's shaking head, Percy's eyebrows rose. "Ron apparently brought up a relationship of hers from fourth year. She thought it was rather childish of him. I must say, I tend to agree."

The younger boy stared. "That's it? Merlin, they have problems."

"Mmm." Percy stretched, eyes closing, and the sleeve of his loose dress shirt slid down slightly to reveal the faint outline of a bruise that had been much darker the first time Harry had seen it, two weeks ago. Frowning slightly to himself, he decided not to bother Percy about it just yet. When the man looked over at him again, he didn't seem to percept his thoughtful expression, or perhaps ignored it.

**-scene switch-**

Another week and a half passed in relative monotony. Ron and Hermione had finally begun to make amends after Harry had brought to their attention how stupid they were being. Three days before the start of term, Remus was at the Burrow during breakfast. It was a pleasant surprise, and one that the trio gave little thought to, until Mrs. Weasley told them that it would be Remus accompanying them to Diagon Alley for their supplies. Harry knew that this was only because the Order required that he be watched all the time, but he was glad that they had gotten Remus this time instead of some spy following him invisibly.

Having at last made sense of floo, there were no incidents of appearing in the wrong place, and the four of them got there safely, along with Ginny, who needed to get her own supplies for fifth year. The five of them stuck together much of the time, and Remus had a good time recounting good times from the Marauder days.

"You know that yearbook I gave you, Harry?" At Harry's nod, he continued, holding a few books for the boy as he browsed a shelf of them. "That was our last year at Hogwarts. The yearbooks themselves are only available for seventh years, and I'm not even sure if they're still done anymore. Sirius' had a lot of little notes in it, I think your friend Hermione gave you a revealer eraser, you may need to use that to see some of them."

The teenager felt a stab of guilt for paying his father's friend next to no attention, so he shifted his gaze to the man, taking the books back and letting Remus enchant them to become weightless and follow them as they continued their shopping.

"Sirius was certainly one for dramatics. He always had several girls after him at once, but you know, I don't think he was ever too interested," the man continued, tapping his chin in thought.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, glancing to his right to see Ginny wandering up to a classmate to say hello.

"Don't really know... he just didn't." He shrugged, and Harry had a feeling that there was quite a lot more too it that he wasn't about to be told of. "Seventh year was a great year, though. The current events of the time were pretty bad, but Hogwarts was very safe. We had a great time. Your father finally managed to win Lily over, you know."

Remus continued to describe his parents' relationship in great detail. Harry had an excellent time laughing along with the older man, and though he knew they would never be as close as Sirius and himself, he knew it was a few steps in that direction. And it passed the time well; they had the shopping done quickly and later the other three joined them and heard some more about the events of twenty years before.

When Harry got home, he went straight to his room–since Bill and Charlie had left, he got the spare bedroom–and picked up the yearbook for the first time since he'd opened it. He'd given it no second thought, hadn't taken the time to realize that this was a piece of his parents and their friends, a piece of the past that he never did get to hear about from them.

The pages seemed crisp and new, as if the book had been put together yesterday. Perhaps Remus had cleaned it, or it had come with magic on it that kept it new. In any case, he flipped right to seventh year Gryffindors.

And there was his father and Sirius, waving at him from the same picture, with a few other boys he didn't recognize immediately. He found himself smiling back; they looked so relaxed there. Sirius had a glimmer in his eyes that he had never seen before; perhaps something that Azkaban had beaten out of him. It was sad, really, the man had been rather attractive. Blinking, he shook his head and glanced across the other boys. One of them, who he realized with a start was Peter, laughed and pointed across the page, to the facing one.

On the opposite page was his mother, and five other girls, the seventh year Gryffindor females. The picture was labeled, and the people who smiled up at him were giggling and sneaking glances back over at the boys. His mother looked rather flushed, and her bright red hair, comparable to the Weasley's, was messily put back in a makeshift ponytail.

He looked back at the boys on the left, and saw, in the back, Remus. He looked tired, but his smile still showed. His hair looked like it was already turning grey–Remus' hair now was much greyer, but it surprised Harry, how early it had begun to change. Smiling back down at the boy's face anyway, he flipped to the next page, out of curiosity, and found a large group of Hufflepuffs, casually chatting amongst themselves.

There weren't very many Ravenclaws compared to Gryffindors or Hufflepuff; while both of the previous houses had seemed to have anywhere from ten to thirteen people, Ravenclaw only had seven. The houses were obviously much larger back then though–after all, Voldemort certainly hadn't wiped out too many families by that point, right?

With that thought in mind, he turned the page again and frowned down at the Slytherins. They leaned against the rock wall, most frowning, some smirking, all looking unimpressed. How many of these people had gone on to become the members of Voldemort's inner circle just a few years after graduation? As he scanned these unknown people, his eyes stopped on a dark-haired boy, dressed in the school uniform, unlike his casually-dressed house members.

_Snape_, his mind told him, even before he had time to look down at the little rectangular name box and portrait.

Wispy dark hair hung down to his shoulder on one side, while the other was carefully tucked behind an ear. He stood behind the others, a dark figure almost blending in with the stone backdrop; he wasn't one of the tallest, but Harry had a clear view of him from the shoulders up. So this was his wicked teacher, the one that had always been unimpressed by Harry's fame and Harry's father. Of course, since the previous year's accident in Occlumency he should have more reasoning to hate the man, right? But it confused him–was he feeling pity for the teacher he most despised? Making a face, he decided that Lockhart and Umbridge had definitely been worse than Snape, now that he thought about it. As if the boy in the picture knew he was being scrutinized, his black eyes flashed and he half-turned away, taking two steps and walking out of the picture, appearing on the opposite side, leaning against the decorative edge and scratching his rather prominent nose. Harry smiled at the sulky-looking teenager in amusement, then shifted so he was seated rather than lying on his bed.

Shaking his head, he flipped to the very back, looking down at numerous scribbles in different handwritings–notes from Sirius' friends, notes from various other students he'd known. They were mostly the same thing–wishing good luck for the future and expressing the necessity of visiting sometime over the next few months. Scanning them for anything interesting, he decided then to show Percy.

As he slipped out of his door and headed down one flight of steps, he didn't notice the absence of creaking floorboards–and he was so excited that he entered the room without so much as a knock. It was all with good intentions, but what he saw stopped him dead in his tracks in the doorway.

Percy had heard the door open, and had reacted jumpily, knocking a bowl full of something thick and odorless to the floor, where it shattered. He had his shirt off, and though he attempted to hide his chest with his arms as he dove towards the bed, Harry still saw what was there. An intricate pattern of bruises and scars, of cut marks and whip boils; he cringed, closing the door with his foot and staring at the man before him.

"Percy...?"

"Knock," the man told him, not meeting his eyes and hiding under the blanket he had wrapped around his shoulders. "Always knock."

"Percy," Harry repeated, stopping at the edge of the bed and startled by the way Percy recoiled as though he'd been slapped, shrinking into the corner of the bed that was against the wall. "What–what's this? Who did this? What _happened_ to you?"

"No–"

There was silence in which neither moved, Harry staring down at the man and the man staring down into the mattress. The younger of the two was almost afraid to move, afraid to scare the man–the broken man before him, who had so many secrets that he'd kept from his family and those he trusted–if he even could trust–for far too long.

"Please," Harry whispered, carefully taking a seat on the bed near to but not too close to Percy. "You shouldn't have to suffer alone like this. You could–you can make your family understand. They will forgive you, you know. They've done it before among themselves and there's no reason why they can't for you."

"I don't deserve them," Percy muttered. It seemed to be a pre-recorded line, one that he had to recite.

"I disagree," Harry said, tugging away the blanket and leaning in slightly to stare at the battered chest. "These are from recently. My god, Percy–George isn't–?"

"Of course not," the man told him, forcibly turning his head away.

"Then who...."

"I can't tell you," Percy told him, choking.

"Yes you can," Harry insisted, leaning back and offering the blanket back, but Percy seemed to not notice. "The world isn't out to get you–"

"Leave," Percy told him. He sounded like an extremely passive person trying to demand something ludicrous, but after a long moment of hesitation Harry decided he respected him enough to get off the bed, sighing and throwing him a look before he closed the door behind him on the way out.

That night, he started writing in Hermione's gifted journal.


	6. Revelations

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R, now. This is the chapter that gives that meaning. Please heed my warning.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R, so please do not disregard it.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: Another lengthy chapter. Things are explained, things are beginning to get fixed (but the story's not nearly over! Muahaha!), people are happy. Next chapter, they get back to Hogwarts! Please check my note on the last chapter if you read it before I changed it. Now all the Marauders are Gryffindors. I agreed with the people who didn't like where I'd placed them, because really, I don't want that to be a focal point of the story.

Wow! Lots of response for that last chapter. I was surprised. O.o

bigi - You were right!

silver-sunn101 and StolenDreamer - Harry cannot feel anything from the potion because it was passed down in Severus' ancestry, not Harry's. Sorry if that wasn't very clear. :)

-**Chapter Six-**

Two days had passed, and Harry saw no trace of Percy; it was now Saturday on the final day of August. The Burrow was a busy mess of people apparating in and out, Order members popping in for lunch or in amiable greeting, and the teenagers who currently attended Hogwarts gathering their belongings and packing.

Through all this, however, the Gryffindor had in no way forgotten the scene that had greeted his eyes on Thursday evening. In fact, he'd been hovering outside of Percy's doorway, trying to come up with the will to knock, and yet he'd found it impossible. There was nothing to say, there was nothing to ask... it was laid out before him whether he liked it or not.

And here he was, standing there yet again, the third or fourth time, staring at the door and willing Percy to come out of his hole and rejoin the world.

The last year... had changed him. It was the only plausible reason, and really, it was quite obvious. Someone had been beating him, someone–

–Unless he was doing it to himself?

Harry's shoulders slumped forward and he stared at the door. That could be it.

No it couldn't. That just doesn't how Percy was–unless he had pretended all of his life. He wouldn't do that to himself though...

He didn't glance to the left at the sound of someone going into a door down the stairs, but he swallowed and waited until he was sure whoever it was had left the hallway. Then, before he could battle it out in his head like the previous times, he rose his right hand and wrapped his knuckles on the door.

The door opened immediately, like Percy had been waiting for him.

He had.

"Took you long enough," the redhead murmured, gesturing inwards and closing the door with a snap. Since Percy had actually answered and wasn't acting at all like he thought he would, he let himself be herded inside, utterly confused. The man stretched, and took a seat on the bed carelessly, long gangly legs in his black pants folded in front of him indian-style, fingers put together in the shape of a triangle. He was waiting for Harry to say something.

Something wasn't right. He wasn't acting subdued at all... he was acting... companionable? He even had the tiniest of wry smiles, as if everything up to this point had been some sort of stupid joke.

"Er. What's going on?"

Harry knew it was a too-vague and idiotic question to ask even before the three words had left his mouth. He clarified.

"Why're you acting–"

The smile disappearing, he shrugged. "Was kind of hoping that since you came back you weren't disgusted with me like they are."

"I'm not!" the boy told him, sinking into the desk chair. "Confused, maybe, a bit mad at whoever... did that to you–"

"No," Percy told him, eyes sinking to the floor, and Harry saw the gloom return to his face. "You're disgusted. You can say it."

Green eyes flashed in frustration, and he crossed his arms, a motion he'd seen Percy do so much in the past. Now... whenever he crept downstairs during the day, this summer, he'd had one hand across his chest, awkwardly gripping the other elbow, knuckles white. There were no more proud actions to Percy now, except for the few seconds during which he had almost seemed like an older, carefree Ron. No, Percy had certainly changed... and Harry knew it was wrong. He would do everything he could to fix it. He knew it wasn't his problem, but somehow it was. Percy just wasn't Percy anymore, and something about that was just so... _not right_.

"I'm not disgusted by you, Percy." He fought to keep his voice even, to not jump into questions. "I just–" he stopped, and shrugged, throwing his resolve to the wind. "Who did it?"

The eyes stayed lowered, and Harry knew that the man was battling out whether to tell him in his mind. His eyes flittered to different places on the floor as he thought, which the boy watched carefully. When he'd decided, he sighed, and started, in the most monotonous voice anyone could achieve.

"When I was appointed to Junior Assistant of the Minister, I was sure that it was because of the ability Crouch told me I showed while working under him. I was excited, and I was proud of myself, because I'd gotten promoted, in two years, further than my father ever had. I came home, full of this excitement, and announced it to the family–but instead of congratulating me, they automatically jumped to the conclusion that I was spying for the Ministry, that I would betray them for my own ambitions." His eyes met Harry's for a few seconds. "I'm not a Slytherin, Harry. I never wanted to be."

Harry nodded. "I know."

"So I left. There had been so many things that bothered me about my family–I worked so hard to be a role model for my younger brothers, but they never did follow the example. But that was okay, because everyone _liked_ Fred and George, and Ron was friends with _Harry Potter_. How could I top that?"

Harry felt an odd sort of twist in his stomach at that.

"I left. I bought a small flat near the Ministry, and threw myself into my work. And Fudge–"

"Oh my god," Harry said, frozen in his seat as Percy choked. "It was–Percy–oh my god–"

Managing to control his speech again, silencing the sputtering boy, Percy closed his eyes and continued speaking in the flat voice he'd used at first. "Fudge baffled me. He went through times when no one at all understood him–there were times when he barked out orders like he was raving mad. Sometimes he trusted me with important information. And sometimes he acted as though I had somehow failed him, as if I had some secret unspoken duty to fulfill that I'd never known about." He paused momentarily to wipe at an eye, though he'd not been crying. "Turns out, I was supposed to be a spy. And when I finally told him that I'd moved out and gotten my own flat, he got terribly angry. So he slapped me. But that was just where it began. Throughout the year, he brainwashed me, obliviated me countless times. I still don't think I have all of the memories he took away from me. He continued... abusing... me. Then, in June, he punched me in the face," the man pointed to the now almost entirely faded bruise on his cheek, "and it shattered all of the obliviations, or something."

His eyes went up once more to see Harry's expression. "I told you that you'd be–"

"Percy," Harry said, very firmly. "I'm disgusted by Fudge, not you."

There was a second that stretched into half a minute where neither moved, then Percy shrugged. "Thanks."

"Have you told your family yet?"

"No... but I know the twins have suspicions."

"I'll talk to them."

Percy looked horrified. "No! You can't–you won't–"

"I'm not going to tell them anything you just told me," Harry insisted. "I going to make them give you a chance. Don't you dare say that there's no hope in it, because I've been surrounded by Weasleys for more than five years and if there's anything I know about them, it's that they have a very strong sense of family. They can forgive you, Percy."

And slumping his shoulders, Percy shrugged. "Okay."

After a few minutes of talking about small things, Harry left, dragging Percy downstairs with him, for dinner. The others present didn't really acknowledge his presence, although Harry had seen Mrs. Weasley shoot a few grateful glances in his direction.

**-scene switch-**

Harry caught up to the twins in the hallway after dinner.

"We need to talk."

Fred looked at George, and before George could protest, said, "Okay." A glance was shot between them–Harry had a strange feeling that they were communicating with a look–and then all of them shuffled into the twins' room. Edging around a box full of unidentifiable sweets, Harry leaned against the dresser, George sat on the desk chair, backwards, and Fred stretched out in the bed. It was almost giving Harry an odd sense of _before_... a year, maybe two, ago, this situation would be so carefree and welcoming. Now, it was with a quiet tension that it was approached.

"This is about _him_, isn't it?" George asked finally, impatient.

"First of all, _he_ is your brother, and his name is Percy." The twin stiffly shrugged. "And yes, this is about Percy."

"Then get on with it, we were going to work on our raincloud candies." Harry blinked, and he switched to advertisement mode. "Feed one to someone you don't really care for, and watch a realistic raincloud follow them around, raining on only them with _real_ sound effects–lasts up to four hours–"

"George, give it a rest."

It was Fred who had spoken, and he tucked his arms behind his head. Harry, taking the silence as his cue to continue, cleared his throat and stumbled into what he was going to say.

"Percy's just told me some things that happened in the past year. You really don't understand the half of it, George. He needs the support of a family, or he's never going to feel welcome anywhere. Please give him a chance."

He had a moment to reflect on the fact that it sounded more like a plead than a demand before George replied.

"Why should he feel welcome anywhere?" he wrinkled his nose up. "If he hadn't been so proud of himself, maybe he wouldn't have gotten himself in a fix like that anyway."

"George–" Fred warned.

"Fred," George replied sarcastically, head turning towards the bed. "He doesn't _want_ a family. I'm going to let him have what he wants."

"You know as well as I do that Harry's right–he needs some attention that's not so negative–"

It had turned into a verbal battle between the twins. The green-eyed boy had never seen either so angry at the other; they'd always been two to do the same things, make the same decisions, and they'd never fought between themselves in Harry's presence.

And this was so wrong. Could they not see that they should value their family while they still had _all_ of it?

Anger flared up inside of him in an instant.

"–Won't be good for any of us," Fred was saying.

"Merlin, enough!" Harry stopped leaning, but stayed rooted in his place. Both twins looked up at him. "You have a _family_! I'm sure you won't understand it until it happens, but you'll see soon if you continue to act like you can just choose to be against another family member–this is a war we're in. Value your friendships and your families while you have them! I've _never_ had a family, George! And for the brief time that I did, Sirius was locked in the prison of his own house, I hardly got to see him, and then he _died_. You have so much more than I ever had! Please don't keep talking of it like it's _nothing_!"

The desired effect of silence greeted this.

"Here's your chance to patch up your family. Take it, and then in twenty years when you spot how it could have gone wrong, be glad you did."

Now mentally exhausted, Harry flung himself backwards so he was leaning against the dresser again, arms crossed.

George looked between Harry and his twin, silent, face gloomy. "Right then. Guess I'll go talk to him." He stood, leaving the room and heading up one flight of steps without another word. Harry had been so focused on watching him go that he hadn't noticed Fred coming up to him until he was crushed in a hug.

"Thanks, Harry," Fred said, knocking into the cauldron with his foot on the way out, pausing, and throwing some of the sweets inside to Harry, winking before he left.

Smiling to himself, Harry pocketed the candies, stopping in the doorway, watching Percy let the twins pass into his room, pausing for a moment to stare down at Harry, and give the smallest of smiles back.

Then the door was closed.

**-scene switch-**

_Students come tomorrow_, Harry told him, appearing beside him in bed. _You ready?_

"Of course I'm ready," Severus said out loud, but to the vision, it was _I think so_.

The green-eyed teen smiled at him, and he shrugged back, turning back to continue unbuttoning his shirt. It had become so much of a ritual that the vision didn't startle him anymore; the fingertips lightly brushing through his hair had become something he was very much used to and not always aware of. He tossed the dress shirt across the room, where it folded on top of his pants. Lying in bed, he turned away from the boy, and felt arms around him, a shaggy head of hair nuzzling into his neck.

Truth was, he didn't know what would happen when Harry got back. The possibilities, and how Albus was acting scared him. He didn't want to _change_–he wanted to stay in this same-old bliss for–well, he'd never thought about it. Would he teach all his life, become a ghost, and have to teach forever? The thought alone was enough to make him shudder. He would settle down someday. Alone, married, whatever.

With Harry? That was the scariest thought of all.

_Good night_, the vision said, words thick with a yawn.

_Good night_, he returned, leaning back into the embrace the tiniest bit.

**-scene switch-**

Harry made his way up the steps, up to the room that he was sharing with Ron. The distant clanging of dishes washing themselves was heard, and a murmur of Percy's voice floated under the door as he told the twins his side of the story. Another flight of stairs, and he was at the top, knocking on the door and entering.

"Hey, mate, we were just packing," Ron explained, short of breath, with his school supplies everywhere but in his trunk. Hermione had a matching expression, face flushed.

"Uh huh," Harry told him with good humour, opening his own trunk and lining up the books inside, which had somewhat tumbled around. "Likely story."

Hermione let out a giggle, leaving the other two to whip their heads around to look at her, surprised. "You don't mind, do you, Harry?" Ron sputtered at her words for a second, then turned back to him, ears red.

"Nah," he told them, grinning. "Have fun. It's a relief that you two have finally made up."

There was a moment of tension, until Hermione waved it off. "That was stupid anyway."

The rest of the evening was spent happily, as they chatted about unimportant things while packing their trunks. Harry went to bed happily, anticipating Hogwarts.


	7. Internal Debate

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R, now. This is the chapter that gives that meaning. Please heed my warning.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R, so please do not disregard it.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter. And of course, I would be overjoyed if one of my stories got listed in FFN's new naf feature thingy... hehe. ;)  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: Yes, they are back at Hogwarts. Wasn't particularly pleased with my wecoming feast scene, but it's alright. That dreaded thing called school is back in session (actually, I like it, nineth grade is much better than eighth :D), so updates will be fewer and further between for both Switched and this story. I had a bizarre idea for a somewhat AU HPSS from a dream last night... it was crazy, to say the least. Had original characters though, and I find those kind of yucky, so perhaps I could use some already-existing, undeveloped character. Mmm. Anyway, this story. Yeah. O.o Enjoy. Next chapter will involve another, probably lengthier, classroom scene. Still no Real-Harry/Severus action yet, though some Vision-Harry slash.

Thanks for the reviews. :)

Eerie - It's awesome that you like this so far, even if the soulmate stuff makes it seem unoriginal at a glance. :) Knowing what I'm writing is 'believable' is always inspiring too. Don't be awaiting smut though, because this will just be a somewhat light piece - I don't write smut. Can't really, cough, wouldn't know what I was talking about. Ah well. Hope you'll still read anyway. ;)

**-Chapter Seven-**

The welcoming and sorting feast was, as always, a grand affair. Severus had experienced far too many of the same event to be even mildly affected by them; after all, every year of his schooling and then another fourteen years of teaching had made him fall into a rather boring routine.

Well, that was certainly going to change soon, was the thought that arose in his mind. And for once, it was his own words, not the thick, off-the-cuff remarks from the teenager that had started haunting him wherever he went. In fact... he discreetly shifted his gaze from a sneer down in the general direction of the Hufflepuff table to glance at all the corners of the room. He hadn't seen the boy since the students had arrived. Was he gone for good? _Harry. Harry._ No, most likely not, but his copy was sitting at the Gryffindor table, loudly having a good time and greeting friends and new housemates. Even worse, it was virtually impossible to tell the vision apart from the real thing. Who knew what mischief the boy would get onto with that one.

And yet, even though the Hall had been blissfully free of the boy, piping comments at the only one who could hear him, it bothered Severus how Harry, the real one, had yes to notice any of his long, heavy stares in his direction. Albus had noticed them; he'd lightly elbowed him from his right and pointed out the amazing pork roast sitting in front of Minerva's place. And she had noticed his silence and hard stares as well, though she was likely oblivious as to his reasoning for it. The Potions had gained enough trust in the headmaster at least to know he wouldn't spread the word without his consent.

None of the other teachers noticed the variation of his normal broodiness. He knew it was just as well.

Where could that boy be? He'd been drowning out the name echoing through his head thanks to the loud yells of the sorting hat, and developed quite the headache in the process–nothing a good headache potion couldn't cure, of course–but the sortings were finished and Slytherin had seven new members, and yet the damned boy hadn't noticed him and the damned vision had all but disappeared. He wished he'd taken the voice with him, it was getting dreadfully annoying.

And as he poked at the pork roast Minerva had taken it upon herself to place on his plate–_I am_ not _a child, Minerva, quit your mothering_–he wondered why it was so important that the boy notice him.

After all, he didn't _want_ anything to do with the boy. He didn't. He couldn't, anyway, the world would hate him doubly and the Ministry would see to his timely exile to Azkaban.

And Azkaban just wouldn't do. Dungeons were certainly dank, but that place was just _dreary_.

He let his eyes shift the Harry's friends, since the boy was becoming increasingly uninteresting. The youngest Mister Weasley was piling more chicken on his plate, commenting on the mashed potatoes as he did so. Next to him, the Granger girl was sipping some juice, eyes flitting over some clippings from the paper. Next to Harry, Miss Weasley was making animated gestures with her arms, talking happily about something that seemed of very little interest to the boy, though he seemed to be politely listening.

There was something of a pang of sadness at that. No, not sadness, never sadness. Annoyance, he reassured himself. Reassured? No, of course it was annoyance. He shook his head, some strands of hair shaking free from behind his ears, and he impatiently tucked them back, setting down his fork as he did so. He wouldn't fit into the boy's life, anyway. He had two very close, amazing friends (well, Granger was acceptable at least) and a number of admirers, including the youngest Weasley herself. He scoffed at that, and Minerva turned to glance at him questioningly again. He had the grace to shrug before staring down at his plate, then back at the Gryffindor table. Little Miss Weasley, so innocent, so very appropriate for Harry–

He wasn't going to go through this. Severus stood then, sweeping his robes around the chair, a trick he had learned in his school days–it allowed him to be free of the chair without tripping, and it looked quite impressive from most angles–and without even pausing to push it back into its spot under the table, he left, unnoticed by the happy children and most of the staff.

It made him feel sick; had he just experienced envy of the girl? That was sad. Truly a pity, because he shouldn't care, and yet, impossibly, he'd grown used to caring. He shouldn't care. He'd thought himself unable to. And yet, he did, and it made him sick.

And it was unsettling that that thought caused him to lose, at midnight, what little dinner he had consumed.

**-next morning-**

_You're going to be late,_ the boy chided him, grinning stupidly from his lazy sprawl on the bed. The vision had apparently just taken a break, but seemed to know everything he had been thinking during dinner. He only snarled in reply, tossing a belt aside in a search for his wand.

_Damnit, you aren't helping, brat._ He tossed aside a pair of pants identical to those which were currently half-on his legs, and he paused a moment to act on the realization that his movement would be considerably less restricted if he were to get the things on his other leg and button them properly.

_Would you let me if I asked?_

A moment of consideration. _No._

_See? I'm saving you the work of telling me to go away._

"Finally," he muttered under his breath, extracting his wand from the box of the referee uniform that he had only used once five years ago, growing dusty in its little spot at the bottom of his wardrobe. _You put this here, didn't you?_

_Of course,_ and the boy yawned, stretching, then got up, kissed him on the cheek, and disappeared. Momentarily burned out, Severus' arms hung limply at his sides as he pondered this action, then growling again and slung his robes hurriedly over his shoulder, forgetting to button half of his shirt as he sprinted out of his chambers and down the hall, to his classroom.

He remembered to button it on his way into his NEWT Potions class. He had no classes the first two periods, and had slept later accordingly, missing breakfast and starting to get ready a quarter until the third period began. The loss of his wand–damned boy–had easily made him five minutes late.

"Potter, sit down." He wasn't feeling charitable today, not in the least. Especially to his... _soulmate_. The word was ugly in his mind, and he gave the boy a sour expression, tugging at his collar to straighten the wrinkled mess before going to his desk to pick up his lesson plan.

How the boy had made it into his NEWT class, he had no idea, but it had been brought on by a long debate with Albus and Minerva about how hard he was on the boy and how he needed the class. Severus knew he had lost from the start, as he always was whenever he sided differently than Albus. So the boy had been accepted into the class, along with Hermione Granger and, also an amazing feat in itself, Neville Longbottom. He took a moment to briefly wonder whether he'd already lost on the soulmate issue, but decided that was something to tackle when he didn't have a class of ten students looking up at him expectantly.

"As you probably are already aware, this course is a very demanding one. You will have essays assigned nearly every class, due promptly the next period. You may notice we meet more often than we had in the previous years. With less classes, this is to be expected." He paused as he carelessly glanced down at an information sheet that Dumbledore sent NEWT teachers every year, as a reminder of what to inform the students of. "Ah. You also have two free blocks and slightly shorter double class periods. Enjoy this while you have it, you'll only get one free period next year." He tossed the paper aside, and the students seated in front, excluding Hermione Granger, followed its downward spiral to the desk with their eyes. It almost looked comical.

"My advanced Potions classes have a much deeper root in theory than my normal class periods do. You will be expected to be able to name resulting properties of any two regular ingredients when mixed. I should be able to give you directions for a potion, and you should be able to tell me what the result is, without knowing the name of the potion or brewing it. If you miss lectures, you will need to copy someone's notes and write a two-foot essay on the lecture you missed." Severus leaned, one hand gripping the corner of his desk, the other behind his back, and he sighed. "Please know all this so that you are aware of the class you are getting into before you begin. You may see your head of house to change your schedule if you no longer wish to take it. This is a two-year course, and in order to graduate with enough NEWTs, you must stay for all of it." He tapped the chalkboard with his wand, a puff of stirred chalk dust floating into the air around the area he'd tapped. Instructions appeared on the board.

"Review. You did this potion last year. Get to it."

His speech done, he seated himself and stacked some papers more neatly, picking up his second year class notes and starting to scribble down lesson plans.

Then, suddenly, there was weight on his lap and he had to painfully bite his lip to keep from cursing. The quill in his hand was dropped, leaving a line of ink blots on the paper.

Severus' vision had appeared in his lap.

_Why the hell are you here?_ He demanded, desperately hoping no students would look up to see him in such a position. They were all setting up their cauldron, collecting ingredients, paying their horrified professor no mind. _Did I not tell you to stay in the room?_

_Nope,_ Harry answered gleefully. _You forgot about it when I hid the wand._

_Holy hell_, he thought to himself, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, knowing that a student would look up and see the copy on his lap any second now–

The seconds passed.

Hermione Granger, done with the preparation of ingredients already, looked up at the professor to see if he was watching her progress. It was with mild alarm that she saw his white face, worried expression, gritted teeth–

"Sir, are you quite alright?"

Severus' eyes opened, and he did not see a class of shocked sixth years, a baffled Potter. He only saw a lightly concerned Granger and a few other curious faces that quickly turned away. Struggling with the fire under his cauldron, Harry had not even looked up. Just then it occurred to the Slytherin that no one but he could see the boy stubbornly seated in his lap.

He let out a long-held breath of relief.

"I am fine. Get back to your potion."

Somewhere in his chest he felt the speed of his heartbeat, which had skyrocketed from the moment his vision had appeared, slowly and gradually returning to normal.

For another twenty minutes, Severus silently graded around the boy, tiring of asking him to leave. He wouldn't anyway. Then, he heard a commotion and a shout, and looked up to see the contents of Draco Malfoy's potion boiling over, putting out his fire and the fires of those around him. He pointed to Potter, unnecessarily, as the professor knew he would blame any imperfection on the boy who had seated himself across the classroom and was by now just putting his third or fourth ingredient in. Mister Malfoy was not as superior as he liked to imagine, and there was no way that Harry could have done the damage from where he was, but he still told him to stay after class.

And that was that, until the class ended and lunch began.

"See you in the Great Hall, Harry," the Granger girl said, casting a look of pity behind her as she left, closing the door on her way out. She was the last one.

The boy stood in front of the desk dutifully, and Severus tried to stand, quite forgetting the copy in his lap, and tripping back into his chair, eyes falling shut.

Real Harry was alarmed, to say the least, and quickly asked, "Professor?"

_I need to stand_, Severus was telling Vision Harry, urgently. He retreated to a corner, sulking, allowing the Potions Master to stand gracefully, this time, and reprimand Real Harry properly.

"I understand you sabotaged Mister Malfoy's potion."

_Oh, that's mean_, said the vision, at the same time his copy launched into the excuses. "I did not! I was all the way across the classroom! He's just blaming me for his own bloody mistake–"

"Quiet!" Severus snapped. "Ten points from Gryffindor for your outburst." _Be quiet_, he asked the vision, similarly. He glanced at the corner in warning, warranting a confused glance from the boy across the desk. As soon as he'd turned back, the vision started talking again.

_Just let him be, Severus, you and I both know he didn't do that_, the vision said, at the same time its counterpart muttered something.

"What's that?" he asked in warning.

"Nothing, sir."

_Wow, I really don't look good doing the death glare_, was realized from the corner. "Oh, shut up," the professor said aloud.

The Harry in front of him took a surprised step back, glancing at the door and gripping his books tighter. "–Professor? Are you sure you don't want to see Madam P–"

"Just get out," Severus said through gritted teeth, turning quickly to disguise his angry stare to the corner. The Gryffindor too no time in his escape, and within five seconds the door was swinging shut, bouncing back off the latch and hanging open several centimeters.

Sighing, he sunk into his chair, exhausted. He needed to go get lunch–having not eaten breakfast, he was by now ravenous–but joining the same Hall as the Potter boy would probably prove a mistake.

**-later-**

_You_, Severus said, seeing Harry yawning on his bed, _are dead._

The black-haired vision-boy paid him no mind, opting to, instead, strip to his boxers. Growling, Severus did the same, then rummaged through his wardrobe a minute, coming back with a lump of clothing, which turned out to be an old pair of black pajamas. The boy's dark eyebrows rose as Severus defiantly climbed into them and left the room.

Curious as to where the older man was headed, and looking more than a little pouty, Harry jumped out of the comfortable bed and followed out the door. He saw the man settling onto the couch for the night, and he ran up to try and sit with him.

_Not tonight_, Severus told him, irritation obvious in his onyx eyes, as he pushed the boy right off the couch. The vision kicked at him half-heartedly as he fell, then stared up at the man expectantly.

The Potions Master, exhausted and annoyed, simply rolled over.

_Why not?_ He felt his back being poked through the admittedly restricting pajamas. _I thought you_ liked _me sleeping with you._

Ignoring the second meaning the boy may or may not have been aiming to achieve in the sentence, Severus grunted. _For disrupting my teaching and making me into a total arse in front of my class._

He could feel the boy's sulking expression, even though he was turned away and his eyes were shut.

_Besides_, he continued, eyebrows raising, relaxing. _What were you aiming to achieve by appearing in my NEWT class this morning? Did you not expect a punishment?_

Silence. He wondered if the boy had disappeared. Sighing, he rolled onto his back and looked to his right to see if Harry was still there; when he didn't see him, he relaxed and closed his eyes.

And that was all fine and dandy until the younger boy reappeared on top of him.

_Damnit, boy_, Severus cursed, trying to sit up but finding himself unable to. His head was spinning from the sudden weight of the boy, almost as if he'd purposely dropped from a few inches above him. It took until his head was clear to register that the boy was, in fact, trying to get rid of the pajamas.

_I just want to make you happy_, he was saying forcefully, as he tossed the pajama shirt across the room, where it landed on a stack of potions texts. _And I know you'll be happy when you accept to yourself that I'm your soulmate, and you go and start something with the _real_ me._

Severus caught the boy's hands before they could undo the drawstrings of the pajama bottoms. He sneered. _I don't need to be happy. I haven't been in the past, what's one more year?_

It was there that the vision stopped struggling, eyes flitting up and landing on his. _What do you mean?_

A penciled eyebrow rose. _Do you honestly expect me to survive the war?_

Harry stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. _I don't really expect myself to live either, but at least I can be optimistic about it._ His eyes went back up to his face, but seemed to stop on his nose rather than his eyes. _If you're making all these plans as if you'll die, what will you do if you don't?_

Severus was still wondering over that forty minutes later, long after the boy had fallen asleep on top of him. What _would_ he do? He'd thought about it, yes, considered the idea of settling down and... and he had no idea. That hadn't been serious thinking, though. He was trapped between both sides; the dark knew him to be light, and the vast majority of the light thought him to be dark.

He sighed, and the messy-haired boy whose head was resting on his chest stirred. _What is there to be left after the war anyhow?_ he asked himself. _The chaos of the aftermath, problems over power, a broken world that still needs to be kept secret from the Muggles. Nothing will be good._

Green eyes blinked in front of him, and he realized that they'd opened. _And the constant threat of Voldemort being gone isn't good?_

He shrugged, which was pretty hard with a teenager on top of him. Now Harry sighed, propping his head on his elbow, edging up further on top of Severus. _Why not enjoy life while it's available?_ The teenager tilted his head, looking at Severus with a thoughtful expression. _I think I'd like you._

The older man stared at the boy, baffled. _What?_

_I think the real me would like you._ He stifled a yawn, and leaned forward. As usual when the boy kissed him, Severus did not return the favour; however, he didn't pull away either.

_You 'think'?_ He asked as the boy continued to kiss him. _I highly doubt that._

_Soon_, was the only reply. _Kiss me._

Severus scoffed as he broke the kiss, raising an eyebrow. _Demanding, aren't you?_ The boy's expression mirrored his, and after a moment of consideration, he lifted his head up the few centimeters that were between them and closed the gap. It was the first time since the very first night, now more than a month ago, that he'd willingly kissed the boy, and certainly the first time knowing that he was a vision, his soulmate. And it was inexplicable... and it felt good.

But something, somewhere seemed to be trying to tell him that kissing the real thing would feel better. This scared him, and he pulled away sharply, head going back into the cushion, and he looked away.

The boy grinned, though. _See?_ When Severus didn't respond, though, the corners of his mouth fell a little. _I won't tell anyone though. I'll stop pressuring you, for tonight._

Face regaining its mild, uninterested expression, Severus closed his eyes and decided it was about time that he–they?–went to sleep.

_Good night, Severus._

Almost two minutes of internal debate later, the answer came. _Good night, Harry._


	8. Another Side Effect

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R, so please do not disregard it. Yes, I am aware that I rate the content highly... I was already suspended once for the language in this story, I don't plan to be suspended again.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. (Even though that archive's not been updated in forever... cough.) If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: Oh dear, I had no intention of leaving this story and Switched on the backburner for so long. To make a long story short, I really got involved in a lot of school things and life things. In high school I've met so many great new people, and am experiencing things I've never experienced before... close friendships that come with drama, and the like. I've kind of thrown myself into the orchestra in particular, and after submitting some of my writing to a competition in December of 2004, I ended up falling into the hugest writers' block I've ever experienced. For two whole months, I couldn't write anything. This came as quite a shock to me, as you can imagine, as I've thought of writing as the key to my future for as long as I can remember. I recently found out that of the seven submissions I made to the Scholastic Awards, six of them (all but the poetry) won awards of some kind. I'm slowly getting back into writing. I'm really sorry I left this story off for so long. Thank you for all the fantastic reviews and things.

MachiavellianOrange - Wow, thank you.

CannonFodder - Heh, thanks for reminding me that this story, er, exists. I don't plan to let this fan fiction fall into fic-abyss yet.

Everyone: There's a bit more in this chapter on the St. Mungo's happenings, as well as Severus discovering what will be the I think last set of actual side effects from the potion. Ooh, exciting. Enjoy.

**-Chapter Eight-**

_What did I tell you about interrupting my classes!_

Vision-Harry, on the floor after being roughly shoved off of Severus' lap, pouted up at him, rubbing his lower back. The Potions Master had winced at the loud thump the boy had made when he came in contact with the floor, but considering the fact that none of the more gossipy students had looked up, he was the only one that heard it.

_But I thought you loved me!_

Severus' mouth twitched, and the boy on the floor couldn't decide whether it was for an almost-smile or another wince. _Arrogant brat. Go back to my chambers and stay there, I'll be back before lunch in the free half hour._

_No, I'm waiting here._

Severus growled quietly, and didn't notice the confused glance given to him by Miss Granger, who was, as always, seated in the front, with a reluctant Potter boy next to her. _Fine, just don't make a nuisance of yourself._

_What would you do if I were to make a nuisance of myself?_ Harry had a challenge on his face, and was badly fighting back a grin. _It's not like you can kick me out physically, and sleeping on the couch didn't work._

_I have my methods._ He ignored the raised eyebrows from the Gryffindor, opting to stalk around the class, checking cauldrons. Miss Granger's was exceptional, as usual; he stopped in front of Potter's cauldron, crossing his arms and looking down at the potion.

It was the same color as Miss Granger's.

He had to fight against doing a double-take, to see if what he thought he saw was actually what he saw. Raising an eyebrow, he noticed that the boy hadn't even bothered to look up yet, and was making a scene of carefully chopping up the bloodrot into even pieces.

"Hmm," was all he said, before sweeping off down the aisle.

**-point of view switch-**

When the Slytherin head had passed and was a reasonable distance away, Harry put down his knife and got Hermione's attention, leaning in to whisper to her.

"Did he really just go on without saying anything nasty?" His face showed skepticism.

Hermione quickly looked down the row to see where the man in question was. "I believe he did," she said, just as incredulously. She lifted herself from her bench the tiniest bit to see into Harry's cauldron. "You're doing a good job, Harry," she said, rather surprised. Harry frowned at her.

"What, expecting me to do badly?"

She grinned despite herself. "It's not every day that one sees Harry Potter making a passable potion. Ron's still going to think he's gone utterly bonkers though, I'll bet."

"Quit talking and get to work," Snape muttered as he passed back up the row. Harry caught Hermione's eye and grinned, continuing to chop his bloodrot.

**-point of view switch-**

Severus sighed, looking from his class down to the papers he'd finished grading. Putting his red marking ink back into his top desk drawer, he leaned back in his chair and decided to wait out the rest of the class, since there were only ten minutes to go.

Harry and Granger were talking again. He thought about giving them detentions, but realized he really didn't care. His life was crap right now; and detention alone with the two of them would torture him.

_Why is that?_

He didn't even jump. _I refuse to answer that._

Arms around his shoulders. The boy was standing behind him; he could see fingertips as they cradled his head in a loose grip. It would've felt nice if it were anyone but this boy, _this_ Gryffindor doing it.

And yet... it kind of felt nice. When, before, did Severus have someone who was... _willing_ to get this close to him? Granted, this someone was potion-induced, altering of the mind, but somehow, he existed as his own separate entity. Curious, very peculiar indeed.

The class ended, and looking up at his students, he saw that Granger was helping Harry bottle his potion. She had already finished, and the bottle was neatly corked on her desk, labeled with her name in her quick, scrawling handwriting. After bottling his, Harry brought them both up to the desk while the girl put their borrowed tools back.

"I see you've actually brewed something passable," he told the boy, still feeling the arms of the calm Vision-Harry about his shoulders, a light touch...

The boy looked startled. "Sir?"

_You complimented me?_ Vision-Harry asked. It took a moment for him to realize that the Vision had heard the words he'd spoken. How long had the boy been playing stupid? Severus ignored him, choosing instead to focus on staring down the boy. It was the only thing he felt safe doing.

Harry turned away, almost invisibly shaking his head, picking up his books and following his friend out into the hallway with the rest of the students, who were now turning in their potions.

They were all gone now. _You complimented me?_

_Of course not. That's a compliment?_

He felt rather than heard a small sigh as the boy behind him rested his chin on his head, then recoiling. _Severus, I really am sorry for this, but I am going to wash your hair later._

Severus pushed the boy away, standing and crossing the room, straightening the haphazardly-stacked supplies on the shelves in the back of the classroom, turning off the dripping stone sink. _Why did you have to come here?_

There was no answer, and Severus saw upon turning around that the boy had since disappeared. Probably back to their room. He shook his head at that thought; _his_ room, not _theirs_.

**-point of view switch-**

"I told you before, and I'll tell you again," the red-haired boy was telling him, "Snape's gone mad, mate."

"Ron," Hermione chastised, but did nothing more.

"They should do an article in the Prophet–" Harry said, grinning.

"'Harry Potter Rouses Compliment from Snarky Slytherin Head'–"

Hermione couldn't even fight down a grin at that, as the other two boys snickered. Silently, they agreed to go out onto the lawn to spend their free half-period, and turned into a small, barely-used hallway that was a shortcut there. A short walk through the courtyard past other students who had the free half period, too, and they reached a tree next to the lake.

Harry had grown attached to this tree, subconsciously. It reminded him of something old, but he wasn't sure what, and never had time to think about it before engaging in conversation with his friends and forgetting.

"So, has Snape done anything else odd?" Ron asked, sliding down the tree trunk and sitting on the grass next to Harry. Hermione sat on her bag of books, opening one and starting homework.

"Oh, I dunno," Harry told him, digging into his own bag, eager to take advantage of new free time. "I wasn't really paying attention too well."

"He has been acting a little odd," Hermione told them, picking something up out of her book and looking at it. Harry recognized it as a Prophet snipping like the one they'd poured over in the summer.

"How so?" Ron inquired, as Harry asked, "What's that?"

Hermione answered the Weasley as she handed Harry the snipping. "It doesn't seem like him to jump or lose his balance trying to stand up, does it? I do hope he's not getting ill..."

Ron made a face. "I'm so glad I was able to drop that class."

"It's really quite interesting," Hermione said defensively. "Professor Snape seems so much more relaxed when he's teaching a few of us compared to a full class–"

Harry didn't hear the rest as he read the short article as quickly as possible, insides twisting uncomfortably. Written in large, dark letters across the top of the article was '**Wizard Hospital Attacked, 12 Killed, 7 Injured**'. The rest of the clipping described the aftereffects in excruciating detail, but gave no specifics as to the motive for the attack. Several rooms were entirely destroyed, everything, including the patients, thrown together in a large mess. And still no _reason_...

"Why?" he muttered, handing the clipping to Ron, eyes going to Hermione.

"I'm not sure," she told him, frowning and glancing to Ron, whose face was draining of color. "It just seems like–scare attacks, or something–"

"No... they wouldn't target the hospital for that, though, would they?"

"Well... it would mean easy targets and easier slaughter," the girl said, twitching.

**-point of view switch-**

Severus rested his head in his arms on the desk. Never before in his teaching career had he had this sort of mental conflict caused by a student–especially one who didn't even realize it.

_Harry. Harry. Harry._

"I know," he muttered. "I know..."

_I do hope–ill–_

He frowned, eyes closed, brows drawing together at the unfamiliar voice in his head. This was also female, but softer. How peculiar. So different from the fierce voice of Furmage...

_I'm gl–op that class–_

And a male voice. Severus' mouth twitched; this voice he very much recognized. It belonged to the youngest Mr. Weasley, and this told him that the female voice must have been Miss Granger.

_Really–te interesting–Pr–Snape seems–laxed when–compared t–lass–_

He then felt a very strong rush of progressive horror and nausea. It made his stomach twist, and yet he had no idea why...

_Why?_

It wasn't himself voicing the question, though, nor was it the Vision. He was hearing a conversation between the three Gryffindors, and it was bringing on a strong headache as the nausea stayed.

_I'm n–sure... it just–like–scare attacks, or–thing–_

_No... they wouldn't target a hospital for that, though, would they?_ Harry's voice, so clear compared to the other two, echoed through his throbbing head.

_Well, it–ld mean ea–gets and–slaughter–_

Severus winced as the headache overtook him, and he blindly dug in a drawer of his desk for a cure. His movement seemed to end the connection, and as he found the headache cure, the ache in his head entirely dissolved, along with his nausea.

Grunting, he decided he'd best just get to lunch and not worry about the strange occurrence until he could properly sort it out on his own time.

**-scene switch-**

_Severus?_

The word sounded so much like a spoken one that the called upon whipped his head around in search of the speaker, who ended up leaning against the chest where he'd tossed his robes.

_What do you want?_

The Gryffindor crossed the room, looking down at the Prophet that Severus was holding, searching for what might have been the cause of the sickness he'd felt earlier. From what he'd remembered of the short conversation, it had to do with the attacks on St. Mungo's. If the three were going to go meddling into it, he'd best know what they did.

Harry didn't seem particularly interested in the paper, however, and tugged at his arm. _I want to wash your hair._

The Slytherin head stared at him.

_I've already cleaned it. I use a cleaning spell after finishing classes every day._

The boy grinned, green eyes illuminated by the candle on the bed stand. _Sure, it's clean, but you still need to wash it._

He grunted, turning his attention back to the paper, turning a large page to search the next group of articles.

_I think I'd notice if you washed it_, Harry told him, sitting on the edge of the bed next to him and bouncing up and down a little.

_All the more reasons not to bother_, Severus retorted, stubbornly. Harry responded by lying down across the man's lap, crinkling the paper, then groaning when he ended up on the floor, shoved off roughly.

_What the hell is so important about that newspaper?_

_I heard a conversation between you and your two friends, in which I believe an article was mentioned. I'm looking for it._

The boy laughed. _You're looking in the wrong paper._ He smirked, holding up another newspaper from off the floor at his feet. _It was in yesterday's._

And he bolted across the room. Severus groaned and went to him, grabbing for it and missing, tripping into the bathroom and landing on the stone floor, pulling the boy down with him.

The boy stayed still, trapping him on the floor, as the newspaper was on the opposite side of the room, lost in his fall. _Please wash your hair. I will show you exactly where the article is if you do._

Severus sighed. _Fine._

_Great_, Harry told him, beaming as he helped him up, pulling him to the shower, and leaning to unbutton the man's shirt.

_I thought I was to be washing my own hair, boy._

The Gryffindor pouted.

Ten minutes later, Severus emerged from the bathroom, clad in boxers, to find Harry waiting for him on the edge of the bed holding a very small snipping. He seemed very grumpy, but the boy didn't mind as he walked right up to him and scrutinized his hair. _Much nicer_, he told Severus, grinning. _I'll notice, don't worry._

_That's what I was worrying about_, the man muttered darkly, walking around him to see the snipping.

_Why? Don't you want–_

_I've just all but complimented the boy, and have been acting so unusual in the past two classes that they've taken notice. And now I'll show up with clean hair! I'm not trying to impress you, damnit!_

_Isn't that the idea?_ The boy disappeared with a shrug, leaving Severus with himself; he kicked at the bed, cursing.

**-scene switch-**

"Ugh," Severus groaned, rolling over in the bed, reaching out for the boy. When he discovered that there was no Harry beside him, he wiped at his eyes, sitting up.

The room was entirely devoid of any green-eyed Gryffindors. At the foot of the bed was the newspaper from the previous day that he'd left there when bolting after the boy. A clock was ticking, so he turned to squint at it.

"_Shit_!" he muttered, getting unsteadily to his feet and rushing to put on his pants and shirt, battling to get his hair out of his face as he clipped his robes. "Harry, why didn't you _tell_ me that I'd missed my morning classes!"

He wasn't expecting an answer and didn't get one; after grabbing his wand he left, stalking down the corridors to his classroom.

It was empty.

"Damnit." Severus cleaned up a few spilled potions and picked up an overturned chair. He'd sat down behind his desk to grade papers before he noticed the small note pinned to his desk.

It was from Dumbledore. He was requesting his presence in his office during dinner. Severus propped his head on a hand and waited for the students of his next class to file in, looking disappointed that he'd returned.

**-scene switch-**

Severus had always found Dumbledore's office calming, even if every time he went there, he was given unfortunate news; he imagined that there was some sort of calming charm placed on the room. If so, it would be easy enough to detect with one of several detection potions...

"You probably are aware why I summoned you here, Severus," Dumbledore said, a small smile visible through his beard.

"Yes, I know," the Potions Master began, sighing. "I apologize for missing my morning classes, it won't be happening again."

"Mmhmm." Dumbledore's fingers laced together and he glanced sideways at an hourglass that Severus hadn't even noticed on the desk. "If it's not too absurd to ask, is it that your activities with the vision are getting in the way of your teaching?"

The Slytherin head stared at the headmaster. "Are you implying–I assure you that–my _activities_ with Mister Potter are _not_ getting in the way of my Potions–"

The door opened as the sand in the hourglass ran out, and Harry entered, looking more than a little confused. Severus shut up immediately, mouth snapping shut, and he looked to Dumbledore for an explanation.

"Ah, yes, Mr. Potter. Please take a seat, anywhere will do." Harry sat down into the leather chair opposite of his teacher's. The white-bearded man smiled at them both. "I suppose you're wondering what I've summoned you for?"

Harry nodded. Severus looked confused. Why was here, involved in a matter of the Gryffindor's? Unless–oh, Merlin, no–

"Now, Harry, your professor and I have decided that it is in your best interest to bring you here so we can discuss the next few months with you."

The Slytherin's eyes had gone wide, and in his head, he pleaded with Dumbledore. The man's eyes flickered to his, and twinkled. The blasted twinkle. How–Dumbledore couldn't seriously think it would be in his best interest to explain the soulmate potion to Harry. Oh, Merlin–

"We've decided that for the next several months, you are going to be taking your Occlumency lessons from Professor Snape again."

Severus' jaw fell open. "Albus, what–" Harry's face held equal dislike of the situation. "When did we discuss this?"

"I do believe that you both have free time on Saturdays at seven in the evening, so this arrangement will do nicely." He beamed. "You are dismissed."

Both Harry and Severus stood at the same time. The Gryffindor glanced at the Slytherin head and then left the room, followed by Severus, after he'd given a long glare to the headmaster.


	9. Occlumency

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R (it's a very over-rated R... or, uh, M or whatever random letter it is now), so please do not disregard it. Yes, I am aware that I rate the content highly... I was already suspended once for the language in this story, I don't plan to be suspended again.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. (Even though that archive's not been updated in forever... cough.) If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: Heh heh... nine months since chapter eight... I'm dead...  
Actually, I've spent the past month and a half in writing mode (this year's Scholastic Writing stories are due again... I'm submitting ten or eleven stories, I've been busy!) and been thinking, _hmm, I should work on my fan fiction_. Next I gotta update Switched. Bleh. Maybe I'll work on finishing this story and _then_ focus on Switched...  
I actually don't care for this chapter that much, but it's necessary. I'll try not to leave this unupdated again for so long.

The Prince's Jewel - Thanks for the reminder. O.o;;

**-Chapter Nine-**

"I highly doubt you remember anything from last year," Severus told the Gryffindor in front of him, stiffly. It was the fourteenth of September, the first Occlumency lesson. "However, I'm sure that you would argue that you do," he said, as Harry opened his mouth to retort, "so you may write me a five-hundred word essay on this information." His smirk was half-hearted as he lowered himself into his seat behind his desk. "Get to work. I have work I need this time to do as well."

-**point of view switch**-

Harry dug through his bag for a quill and a spare piece of parchment. An accidental slip of his hand, and newspaper clippings about St. Mungo's were falling through the air, fluttering to the floor; he grabbed at them quickly. For some reason, he'd expected a reprimand for his disorderliness, been looking for one even, but the Potions Master seemed to be blatantly ignoring his presence.

Remembering his lessons was a difficult task, but he recalled conversations with Hermione on the matter, his professor's brief introduction to the art, and things he'd picked up on since, and soon he was close to finishing. He glanced up to find the man watching him steadily, stack of graded papers neatly piled next to him; nervously, Harry looked back down at his paper and continued to write. Just another fifty words and he'd be done, he wouldn't screw it up now.

The professor had been watching the corner of the room and rolling his eyes; Harry's eyes trailed in that direction, but there was no one there. He had only just looked back down at his paper when he heard Snape make a scoffing noise, and saw out of a discreet corner of his eye that the man was steadily glaring at the corner again. The Gryffindor's gaze quickly returned to his paper and stayed there, having lost his train of thought, when the professor stood and circled behind him to see what he was writing.

-**point of view switch**-

Harry was obviously uncomfortable as Severus leaned over him, hands on the desk on either side of the boy's elbows. He knew that he shouldn't be doing this, but he ignored his logical side, satisfied when the boy, only a centimeter away from touching him, stiffened below him. "You have messy handwriting, Potter. In your next essay I expect a more orderly paper." A few seconds passed, consisting of Harry's continual stare at his paper, before Severus felt him shudder.

Suddenly disgusted with himself, he stood up again and went to the potions shelves in the back of the room to straighten the ingredients. What the hell was he thinking? He was being such an imbecile...

_Why not just kiss me?_ the vision inquired as he heard Harry's quill scribbling as fast as possible, to get out of the room.

_Because I'm not an idiot_, Severus retorted in his head. _His friends would curse me into last year if they found out I was attracted to him. _Then, for self-preservation, he added, _that is, if they could._

_So you are, then?_

"Fuck off," he muttered without thinking.

"Sir?" Harry asked from across the room, startled.

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed in his head, but did not respond to Harry. _You're making me lose my sanity, Harry._

_I'm not doing anything_, the boy said, still leaning in the corner. _You're the one driving yourself mad. Just let yourself admit it, Severus, you need do nothing else at the moment._

"Go, finish your essay on your own. Be back at the same time next week."

"I'm ten words from finishing it, sir."

He grunted, closing his eyes for a moment.

_Why is he staying?_ Severus demanded of the vision. He simply shrugged.

"Here," Harry said, walking over to hand him the paper, eyes on the floor, and then leaving the room in haste.

-**point of view switch**-

"Bloody hell," Harry said, upon entering his dormitory. No one else was there yet, so he kicked his shoes off and climbed into the four-poster, snapping the draperies shut. The second he closed his eyes, the memory of Snape being so near to him, but still not touching, came to mind. He'd never been so close to the man in his life. Had... had Snape smelled good? Had his hair looked different? He made a face. The man was a teacher, twenty years older than him, what was he thinking?

A shudder. Was the man's proximity intended to scare him, or... or what? Arouse him? Horrified, he realized it had done exactly that. He had liked Snape being near to him... hell.

Oh, hell.

What was the world coming to? Couldn't there be a normal day for him? But no, he was Harry Potter. Every day was one misadventure after another.

Harry rolled over.

The words he'd heard from Snape when he'd entered the Headmaster's office came to mind. "–_With Potter are not getting in the way of my Potions_–" He frowned into his pillow. _What_ **_about_** _me_? he wondered. How did things always somehow concern him?

He rolled back the other way. Images of dark robes came to mind, and he saw knuckles on the desk on either side of his parchment, Snape's body surrounding him so closely but not quite touching... he remembered himself shuddering. Now, in dreams, he wanted to see what happened if...

_This isn't right._ Harry rolled onto his back and stared up at the canopy of the bed; it was a deep crimson, but right now it looked black. _I have to talk to Hermione._

-**point of view switch**-

"What was I thinking?" Severus muttered.

_You were thinking how lovely it would be to kiss the real me_, the vision provided, helpfully.

Severus flung a shoe at him, then hung his head in his hands. "I wasn't thinking at all. That can be the only explanation. What am I going to do next week, when I'm alone with him again?"

_Kiss him!_

Severus thought about shooting him a "_kiss my ass_" but decided against it. Instead he tossed his clothes across the room to be folded, laid back in the bed, and stared at the ceiling.

He closed his eyes. A wave of confusion washed over him.

_So, Harry's confused then_. _That means he probably knows something is up_. Severus groaned.

Vision-Harry appeared in his field of vision, smiling slightly and running his fingers through his wispy hair. Then he lowered his head, but not, as Severus had expected, to kiss him; he just laid it down on his chest. Severus couldn't help it; his formerly creased brow smoothed, and the corners of his mouth turned up the tiniest bit.

_This feels so natural_, he realized, eyes sinking shut.

_Hmm_, he heard from the vision. _I'm tired_.

He stretched his free arm, and used his wand to turn out the lights, and drifted off to sleep.

-**scene switch**-

The next Occlumency lesson–on the 21st of September–came and went with little occurrence. Severus had Harry read a passage from a book he'd found a few nights prior about the theory behind the art of mind magic; he'd relaxed into the silence and graded papers, and it wasn't until the vision mentioned it later that he found out that the boy had been watching him as he read.

"Why?" he'd asked, frowning. "Did he seem nervous? Afraid?" He'd known asking the vision such questions subjected their answers to a lot of bias, but he hadn't really mind at that moment.

Vision-Harry had raised an eyebrow, a trait he'd certainly picked up from Severus. _Concerned, aren't you?_ Severus had growled at the vision but otherwise remained silent. _He suspects something_.

The Potions Master had grumbled some Latin cuss word under his breath. "That's just great."

_He's just curious._

"That eases none of my worries," he'd told the vision, who simply shrugged. He'd considered going to talk to Dumbledore, but what would that do? The old fool would just lead him in circles with that damn _twinkle_ and then send him on his merry way, even more confused than he'd come.

_Why not?_ The boy beside him had shrugged again, and looked up at him. _Why don't you ever think about how nice it is when you're stressed over this? Isn't_ not worrying _preferable to worrying?_

"It's not right," he'd said. "Harry is so much younger than me. He hates me and I hate–" he'd stopped. The vision had been lying behind him, arms around him. Severus hadn't been able to say he hated the boy, because he really _didn't_, not anymore. "Anyway, you're not like Harry at all." He'd felt the vision stiffed against him, but, stupidly, had plowed on. "You're so much more... docile."

_Docile!_ the boy had echoed, pulling away from Severus and sitting up. Severus had sat up too, his mouth flying open. _What kind of–! Docile_... Vision-Harry had then proceeded to disappear.

Severus hadn't seen him in the week since.

-**point of view switch**-

Harry fidgeted, seated next to Hermione in the library, working on their respective potions essays. Ron didn't take the class and consequently avoided the library like the plague when his girlfriend was working on work for NEWT Potions. He'd come to find that Hermione would berate him for missing out on the wonderful theories the class focused on.

Somehow, whenever he'd intended to tell Hermione about the strange feeling in his gut whenever their Potions teacher was around, it had always slipped his mind. Or, otherwise, he had missed the opportunity to bring it up, or had hesitated so long Hermione had to go. He'd certainly had lots of chances over the past two weeks, between free periods without Ron around (they had one when Ron had one of his classes), and poring over clippings from the Prophet.

The whole time he'd been pondering this, he'd been playing with the corner of his parchment, which was now shredded.

Next to him, Hermione sighed and put down her quill. Harry hadn't even picked his own up.

"Harry, what's wrong? You're so distracted that it's distracting _me_." She half-turned sideways in her chair, towards him.

"Er." He didn't have the words ready. _Snape_. "Snape," he said.

Hermione's brow creased. "What about him?"

"I'm so confused," Harry muttered, sinking into his chair. He glanced around at the nearly-empty library. They were at the table furthest from the windows into the hall, tucked back behind some shelves. The only other student in sight appeared to be asleep in his copy of _Hogwarts, a History_. Taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth. "During the first Occlumency lesson," he began, then stopped again. "Snape kind of..." he cut himself off once more, wrapping his arms around his head and sinking to the tabletop. "I'm not sure," he said hastily. "Just... in the first Occlumency lesson, he did this thing–I mean, it could mean nothing at all, you know? But he, like, leaned really close over my shoulders, reading what I wrote for my essay..."

Harry had said all of this at a lighting pace, speeding up as he said it. It took the bushy-haired girl beside him a moment to catch up. "Wait–you said he leaned over you?" Her brow furrowed.

"What?"

"I'm not sure. He's sure been acting strangely lately, hasn't he?" It was a light comment, like she was commenting on the weather, but Harry knew it perplexed his more intelligent friend.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"Maybe we should talk to Dumbledore."

"We could." Harry looked down at his blank essay.

"Oh dear, Harry, you really should write that, it's due tomorrow."

Harry put the issue out of his mind as he started a shoddy two-foot essay.


	10. Awkwardness

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R.  
**Warnings**: If you've read this far, you know that there's HPSS slash and I shouldn't need to warn you again. Rating is now R (it's a very over-rated R... or, uh, M or whatever random letter it is now), so please do not disregard it. Yes, I am aware that I rate the content highly... I was already suspended once for the language in this story, I don't plan to be suspended again.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter.  
**Archive**: This is archived here, and on my own site. (Even though that archive's not been updated in forever... cough.) If you'd like to archive elsewhere, ask first.  
**Noted**: I wrote this from 12:30-2AM this morning, then got up at eight and worked on it another hour and a half and got the whole chapter done. It's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it. (And are in a fan fiction kick, even if it's not for the same fandom. I've been in a shameful Jimmy Neutron fanfic mood lately. It's terribly wonderful.)  
I've been working this summer (uh, yay for jobs at Kmart?), but hopefully I'll still be in this kick and will write another chapter before school starts. (Scary junior year plus work plus karate plus extracurriculars plus AP classes plus being president of the GSA equals Absolutely No Time.)  
Oops. Sorry about the mistake in the previous chapter about the dates for the lessons. They are, indeed, the 14th and 21st. I take really bad notes for my outlines. I'll go back and fix that and some other typo issues someday.

I've got to warn you that I'm not pleased with the OOC-ness of Harry especially in second half of this chapter. Of course, sad as it is, most anything Snarry is out of character, but some people manage it so well - I do not feel like one of those people right now, however. So I apologize and am ready to face any criticism of out-of-characterness for this chapter. I shall learn from it.

**-Chapter Ten-**

Four weeks into September, Harry got a brief owl from Percy. In it, the man described Fred and George's newly-acquired acceptance of him, which was spreading to the rest of the Weasleys slowly; even his father was starting to ease up on him. He assured Harry that he was indeed eating at every meal and had gained a little bit of weight.

It was all good news, and Harry was happy for him. He wrote back a quick reply, about how his NEWT courses were going and briefly mentioning the news from St. Mungo's which the trio had been intently following for the past two months.

These incidents were increasingly depressing. Blurry photographs showed unclear tangles of mess where whole wards had been. Each article came with a death toll: six, eleven, fourteen. There were repeated reassurances of increased security measures followed by articles describing just how these measures had all failed in every conceivable way.

"What I don't understand," Ron was saying, flipping through his charms book without actually looking at the pages, "is why the Death Eaters keep attacking St. Mungo's, with all the risk of the security they keep talking about."

Harry rolled up his reply to Percy and sent his owl out the open Gryffindor tower window. "They're obviously not working, Ron."

"Yeah, but–"

"The Death Eaters have a reason to keep going back, obviously," Hermione said, while scribbling down notes for her Potions essay ("explain the four characteristics that all variations of Veritaserum share, and detail the ingredients that create these properties") out of a text borrowed from the library. Ron arrived at a page in his charms textbook and stared at it for a moment, then absently started flipping backwards through the pages again. "If they keep breaching the security, then they're putting a lot of energy into it, too."

"Can I borrow that book when you're done, Hermione?" Harry unscrewed his inkwell, then scowled when she shut the book before giving it to him. "Are they trying to find someone in particular?"

"Perhaps," Hermione agreed, and flattened a two-foot piece of parchment for her essay. "I think it's far more likely, though, that they're not sure what they're trying to do, if they keep repeating the killings. Maybe they're looking for something."

**-point of view switch-**

Severus held his forehead in his hands, grimacing. The words shared between the trio were becoming clearer, but, unfortunately, his headache was intensifying.

They were still hooked on the problems at St. Mungo's. He sighed, realizing that knowing this now made him partially responsible for their safety. He'd saved the brats' lives more times than he cared to recount right now.

The truth was, though, he was curious about the break-ins himself. What _was_ it that Voldemort wanted with a few dozen blubbering mental patients?

_Hey guys_. Harry's voice, part of the conversation he was hearing. _I think I'm going to bed_. _See you tomorrow morning_.

Severus leaned back, propping himself against the headboard of his bed. It had been nearly a week and he hadn't seen Vision-Harry at all. Part of him wondered if he was gone for good. He tried to ignore the empty feeling that struck him right then, but after a moment confusion bubbled up in its place, inexplicably.

Confusion?

His headache had started easing up, but now it was growing back. This headache thing really had to stop, he couldn't keep getting migraines every time he thought of Harry.

Harry's confusion was really thick. He wondered what on earth the boy could be so baffled about so late at night. Surely it could wait for morning? Hadn't the boy learned anything about draining his thoughts before he went to sleep?

Disgust ran through him like nausea, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. Disgust. Severus felt uneasy. _Disgust_.

_This is stupid_.

The Slytherin sighed, fluffed his pillows, and found himself wishing that Vision-Harry was there with him. The boy had been hard to get used to, and now he was even harder to give up.

He was just drifting off into sleep when he felt the light touch of arms around him, and in his barely-conscious state, it felt so natural, so _normal_, that he was almost instantly asleep.

**-point of view switch-**

Closed inside his four-poster, Harry bit his lip, eyes shut, attempting sleep. It wasn't working. He didn't know what to do about Snape.

Well, actually, his mind advised him that doing _anything_ about Snape was a terrible idea. Terrible. And not something he should even think about acting on.

His mind once more returned to that single moment in time, two weeks ago, where Snape had stood just over him. On either side of his essay were Snape's thin hands, palms flat on the desk surface.

Had his palms been flat? For some reason, Harry seemed to remember knuckles on either side instead.

Then, he was sure he'd felt nervous, maybe he'd even shuddered, but now he found it–found it what? He bit his lip. The word _erotic_ came to mind, and then his mind wheeled back in momentary disgust. _Erotic_? His lip quivered. What the hell was he thinking? Snape? Erotic? _This is stupid_, he told himself. Shook his head. His stomach was still churning in self-disgust when he finally drifted off to sleep.

**-scene switch-**

Saturday the twenty-eighth dawned warmly, and many of the castle's occupants were to be found outside, enjoying one of the last days before the chill of winter would begin to overtake the grounds. Even Hermione, one accustomed to staying indoors and working on homework on Saturdays, was tempted by the sunny day.

Ron, meanwhile, had probably never finished a homework assignment on a Saturday and wasn't looking forward to changing that any time before finishing school, and thus was already down at breakfast this particular morning.

Harry had been thinking about his–realization? Lapse of mental capacity?–all night and into the morning. He did not, never had, would never feel any kind of attraction to Severus Snape, loathed Slytherin head.

Too bad he knew this assertion was incorrect. He'd dreamt all night of swooping robes and pale skin and wispy black hair, like the man had sported in his seventh-year photograph. Now it was just greasy and heavy. What had changed it?

"Harry," Hermione started, standing in front of her, bag over her shoulder. "What's got you all tense? Is it Snape again?"

Harry's eyes widened and his head whipped around to scan the rest of the common room, but it was actually completely empty, for once. "Will you please try not to be so... _indiscreet_?"

"Indiscreet?" Hermione raised an eyebrow, opened her mouth, then closed it again. Harry watched as, before his eyes, things seemed to be falling into place for his friend. Normally she was quicker to catch on than this, but it was no matter. "You–"

"It's not like–I just–eugh," Harry started, interrupting the brunette. "When he... when he did that _thing_, leaning over me and all that... I don't know." Harry was wringing his hands in discomfort.

"It's okay, Harry." Hermione gave him a small smile. "I won't tell anyone."

"I don't want you to think that–! Er. I don't know, Hermione, really, I don't. ...I feel really dumb."

"Really, Harry, I won't even tell Ron. If you need to talk," here, she smiled brightly, though maybe not entirely wholeheartedly, "and can find it in you to string together complete sentences, I'm here for you."

"Thanks, Hermione."

**-point of view switch-**

_Wake up_. Severus shook his head groggily. He felt a pair of lips on his, lightly brushing. His eyes flew open.

"You're back," he said. Still groggy. It was even a second or two before he realized how obvious this observation was and how desperate he must have sounded.

_When he did that_... thing, _leaning over me and all that_... _I don't know_.

The words passed through his head, but they weren't coming from Vision-Harry. He was wide awake now.

_It's–ry, I won't–one_.

The Granger girl. Her words were still indecipherable, hopelessly jumbled.

_I don't want you to think that_... _er_. _I don't know, Hermione, really, I don't_. Severus' eyebrows lowered in concentration. _I feel really dumb_.

"Stop smirking at me like that." Severus glared at the boy lying beside him.

_I told you I'd like you!_

He closed his eyes, and for once the world actually shut out into darkness, instead of the strange separated feeling of seeing with lidded eyes. _It doesn't necessarily mean anything_. Beside him, the vision was positively beaming at him.

_But you know it does_, Vision-Harry told him excitedly, and he rolled away from him. The boy pouted. _What, I'm back and now you just want to ignore me?_

Severus had been imagining Harry's–the _real_ Harry's–shudder beneath him when they'd been so close they were practically touching. He might have felt the slightest bit of the boy's hair brushing his neck as he read the essay which, in complete honesty, was less than desirable but not terrible. Harry had retained some information about Occlumency. _I've got to teach you tonight_.

_I know_.

The Potions Maser sighed. He wasn't looking forward to teaching the boy later, was afraid he'd do something stupid enough for a Gryffindor which would result in Harry's absolute disgust.

Like last night. What had that feeling been about? St. Mungo's patients? Homework? Severus' mouth flattened to an entirely straight line. _Me_?

The vision was playing with his hair, hands running through it smoothly. _There_, he said.

_What did you just do_? Severus glanced at the mirror, then did a double-take, in complete astonishment. _What did you **do**_?

_I made it look like you actually did something with your hair for once_. _You didn't, of course, but it's the thought that counts_.

His hair was tied back with a black cord, but not perfectly, because a few wisps of black hair hung around the sides of his face. It looked _nice_. _How did you do that_?

_Well, the process is quite simple, really, involving a small piece of string_–Severus elbowed him–_oof_. _Remember how you washed your hair? Well, even through all those dulling cleaning spells you keep using on your hair, it still stayed a little nicer looking_. _Next we just need you to wash your hair the muggle way more than once in a lifetime_.

_Thanks_. To save himself the mock-astonishment that was sure to come after expressing gratitude to the vision, he hurriedly got ready for breakfast.

**-point of view switch-**

"Hey, Harry, Hermione." Ron was reading the Quidditch section of the Prophet when his friends got there. "Guess what? There's nothing about St. Mungo's in there at all today."

"Really? You read the whole newspaper?" Harry speared three pieces of bacon with his fork and helped himself to one of them. Hermione was smearing a bagel with cream cheese.

"Nah, I used a scanning spell." Ron yawned. "The eggs are good this morning," he suggested to his girlfriend.

Harry looked up just in time to catch the Potions Master entering the room quietly, and helping himself to his seat at the teachers' table. Once he was seated, he looked straight at Harry and his eyes flashed. The Gryffindor quickly looked away, but his eyes ventured back pretty quickly. "Hey guys," he said, quietly. "Look at Snape's hair." Both of his friends turned to look up at the teachers, Ron with a bit of toast half-sticking out his mouth. _Snape looks great with a ponytail_, Harry realized.

"Whoa," Ron said. Hermione smiled shrewdly beside Harry. The raven-haired boy noticed this but chose not to comment on it. "What's into Snape this morning?" Ron asked, oblivious to his friends' unspoken thoughts. "I'm telling you, guys, he's gone completely bonkers."

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry watched Snape as he talked to Dumbledore softly. He exchanged a few short words with the Transfiguration teacher on his other side. Then he looked straight at Harry, again. Harry met his eyes, and they held the look for a few seconds. Then Snape's upper lip curled and he looked away.

**-point of view switch-**

The vision had been nowhere to be found since he'd left for breakfast. He supposed the boy may have simply stayed in their–damnit, when had it become _their_ and not _his_?–rooms.

Albus Dumbledore was babbling on happily to his right, and Severus ignored him as he turned his hair to look at the Gryffindor who had been invading his thoughts for the past two months. He was surprised to see the boy's eyes already on him. He gave it little thought, sending a quick glare and then turning back to Albus, who had stopped talking, he realized belatedly. "Feeling distracted?" the man asked him. Oh no. The _twinkle_.

"Of course not. Please continue, it was fascinating."

_Snape looks great with a ponytail_, Snape heard in his head, and didn't dare look down at the boy at that moment. He felt a horrible little rising feeling in the pit of his stomach at that, though.

"I'm almost completely certain you don't want to hear how I get my muggle candy to Hogwarts, Severus." The twinkle, oh, how evil it was. "By the way, I like your change in appearance. I'm sure young Mister Potter appreciates it too. You should stick with it."

Severus sneered. _I know he appreciates it, Albus_. On his left, Minerva, being the ever-helpful annoyance she was, was shoveling food onto his plate without his notice. "I can assure you that I will not, under any circumstances, _stick with it_." He sighed. "Minerva, please stop." He looked down at his heaping plate in frustration, feeling the slightest bit helpless among his happy-go-lucky colleagues.

He looked back down at the Gryffindor, more out of habit than any real desire to look at him.

Damnit, the boy was still watching him. When he met the boy's eyes, he lifted his chin defiantly, staring straight back at him. Severus felt the same little rise and heard Harry's thought replaying again in his head: _Snape looks great with a ponytail_. Maybe the vision had been correct after all. He curled his lip in a sneer again and looked away.

**-scene switch-**

It was five before seven, and Severus impatiently tapped his fingers on his desk. The day had gone so _slowly_. He eyed Vision-Harry, who was on the other side of the room, amusing himself by peering at the various potion ingredients in bottles he decorated his office and classroom with. The boy was investigating the newt's eyes when his counterpart entered, three to seven. Severus raised an eyebrow. The boy was early?

Sure, it was just three minutes. But–

"Hello Professor." Harry dumped his bag into a seat, then seated himself beside it.

"Hello Mister Potter." Severus glanced up to where the vision had been, but he was no longer there. _Don't make a nuisance of yourself_, he warned. He brushed a wisp of hair out of his face, and remembered he still sported the ponytail which Harry had decidedly liked at breakfast. Not that it mattered. It wasn't like–

_Go, already, Severus_.

"I reviewed the essay you wrote during our first meeting. It seems you have more of a grip on the subject than I thought. The section I had you read last week was on a much broader area, mind magic, but the theories for mind magic and Occlumency are very similar." Severus glanced again around his room, not seeing the vision. "I plan to teach a strong basis in theory so that this year you may learn better form." He felt like he was lecturing to a sleeping class of second-year Hufflepuffs.

Harry seemed to be raptly paying attention. Hmm. Unusual.

So he continued on about the theory behind Occlumency and how it related to other forms of advanced mind magic. It was eight before he knew it, and somehow, Harry had managed to not only pay attention but also write notes.

The chimes had already struck eight times through the castle, and Severus turned away to concentrate on packing up the papers he'd been grading before the boy had gotten there. Behind him, he heard Harry putting away the note sheets. The Slytherin straightened the pile of shoddy third-year Gryffindor and Ravenclaw essays, putting them together in his bag. _Say it now, before you lose the nerve_. It wasn't Severus' thought, and Vision-Harry was seated at his desk, twirling a quill between his fingers benignly. The boy still behind him coughed awkwardly.

**-beware of omniscient point of view-**

_Say it now, before you lose the nerve_. Harry gulped then tried to avoid choking while he cleared his throat. _You're being bloody stupid_. "Uhm, Professor," he started, and Snape straightened up and turned around to face him, looking annoyed. This made him stumble. "I just, er, wanted to tell you, you should keep your hair that way." _Run_, Harry thought, but he couldn't successfully get his legs to move.

Severus raised a pencil-thin eyebrow. He considered a several sarcastic responses, before settling for a cautious, "I'll consider it." Part of him was enjoying making the boy uncomfortable. Harry couldn't get himself to move, which amused him greatly. He took a step closer to the boy, more to prolong his amusement than to do anything. "Thanks for the suggestion."

_You're welcome_. "You're–ah," Harry mumbled, and looked down blankly at the floor, where his inkwell had shattered, ink staining everything close enough to its point of impact.

Severus undid it with a wave of his wand, and held out the bottle to the boy. Harry took it carefully, either so he wouldn't drop it again or so their fingers wouldn't touch, and let it fall into his bag.

_Go_, thought Harry. "Thanks for the lesson, Professor," he said quickly, and turned to leave the room.

Halfway down the dungeons hallway, Harry berated himself. _What are you thinking!_ He gripped his bag tightly, staring ahead as he picked his way back to Gryffindor tower. _I'm not gay_, he thought sharply, then bit his lip. He wasn't really sure. But he needed to talk to Hermione.

_What are you thinking!_ rang through Severus' thoughts, and he watched as the vision sighed, shoulders slumping a little.

Severus watched this in annoyance. _What_–

_I'm not gay_.

Severus blanched.


	11. Lifesavers

Side Effects

**Author**: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).  
**Summary**: A potion's accidental side effects were passed down an ancient bloodline for centuries, before they reached the one that needed them.  
**Rating**: R. M. Whatever. To be safe.  
**Warnings**: Harry/Severus Snape slash! Snarry! _GAYNESS_! And, er, a very procrastinating author.  
**Reviews**: Very much appreciated, but not required. If you have confusions I will try and resolve them by answering you in the next chapter. **_I also appreciate long, constructively-criticizing reviews on writing technique!_** In two years I want to be a creative writing major, and I'm already used to constructive criticism on other writing - slam me with it! Point out every little nitty gritty typo and error and out-of-character remark I make! This story doesn't have a beta (I procrastinate too much, I'd drive all but the most lenient of betas insane), so all the mistakes are mine. I plan to clean this story up someday, and constructive criticism can _only_ make a writer better!  
**Archive**: Ask first.  
**Noted**: Please don't die. Really, I don't mean to give you all heart attacks from the speed at which I'm suddenly updating. I'm thinking maybe I can write this between everything else, and hopefully finish it before another school year goes by during which I don't update. And, hey, look, this story's two years old today!

I toyed with the idea of calling this chapter "The Chapter In Which the Author Realizes She Overuses Italics." Beware.

**-Chapter Eleven-**

He threw his robes to the corner in disgust. They folded, and on top of them, his dress shirt and pants folded themselves, too. He sat on his bed, holding his head in his hands, mussing up the wisps of hair he'd tried to keep perfect all day, and for what purpose? To impress H–the Potter boy? He tugged the cord that tied it out of his hair, flinging it away from him, not noticing where it landed. He was sure a house elf would find it eventually.

Severus wasn't sure why he cared so much.

It had been the plan, hadn't it, to stay away from Potter? Be as cold as he'd always been, never hint at anything that may lead him to wonder. And yet, Albus insisted on arranging it so that he must spend an entire hour every Saturday evening, alone in a room with the boy. And what had it done? The exact opposite.

He was disgusted with himself about how all this had progressed. Honestly. Potter was still only sixteen, and Severus had been making out with his image for the past month, then dreaming of replacing it with the real thing. It was pathetic; morally wrong, even.

He pressed on his closed eyes with the heels of his hands until he saw burned-in black and white circles, like he used to do as a teenager. It was calming.

The bed dipped in beside him, and he snarled. "Why did you come back, anyway? To encourage irrational thought before reality set in? You are nothing like him. _He's_ not gay." The vision was quiet. Severus fumed for a few seconds longer. "How is this happening? How are the _Potter boy_ and I soulmates? This has to be some cruel punishment from the Dark Lord. He had plenty of time to curse me before the trials, didn't he?" More silence. "Or maybe it was Albus." He rubbed at his eyes, sore from being pressed in so hard. "That would be just like him, wouldn't it? To try to put some semblance of a relationship in my life to–to what?"

"Severus?"

"Distract me from myself? Make me more normal?"

"Severus."

"I won't stand for it. This can't–"

"_Severus_."

"_What_?" He growled and whipped around, eyes flying open, to face his left, where Vision-Harry was sitting patiently. "Are you going to–"

"Shut. Up."

Severus' mouth closed with a snap. He glared at the floor stones.

"Go grade tests or something."

"I finished them while–I finished them."

"Then go make more."

He lay back next to Severus, lying horizontally across the bed, arms outstretched on either side, effortlessly taking up the entire bed. He shut his eyes, yawned with the gawkiness of a teenager. As he watched, the Slytherin's mouth twitched, leaving him somewhere in the fuzzy grey area between amusement and annoyance. His anger was now leaving him in torrents, leaving nothing behind but tiredness.

Somehow, he fell asleep, and when he awoke in the middle of the night, Vision-Harry was nestled comfortably in his arms, asleep with him. The other puzzle piece.

**-point of view switch-**

Harry maneuvered through the halls mechanically. How many times had he gone between the dungeons and Gryffindor tower over the past five years? But today he did it slowly, and by the time he got back to the common rooms it was half past eight.

Ron and Hermione were in the corner by the stairs up to the boys' dorms, playing chess. Hermione wasn't losing as spectacularly as she usually did, most likely due to the fact that Ron appeared to be explaining to her exactly why he was making each move as he made it. For the first time since he'd left them earlier for his lesson, he smiled. It was much less worrisome here, the whole Snape thing, surrounded by the comfort of red and gold and his friends.

"Hey, mate," Ron said, and invited him to sit down. This seemed to make Hermione lose her concentration, and she leaned back from the chess board, squeezing her eyes shut for a few seconds. She offered Harry a smile.

"Hey guys," he said, and sat on the chair between theirs. "How are you?"

"We're good. How was your lesson?" Hermione beamed at him. Ron didn't seem to notice her excitement, stretching in his seat and yawning. "Anything exciting happen?"

Harry sent her a sour look while his other friend wasn't looking. "It was fine. He lectured about the theory behind Occlumency the whole time."

"I'm sorry for you," Ron said, grinning. "That sounds about as exciting as Binns' class." His face rumpled into a look of mock nostalgia. "Oh, how much I don't miss that class."

"It wasn't that bad," Harry admitted, poking one of Hermione's pawns, which growled at him. "Occlumency, that is. It's kind of interesting, I mean, there's a whole lot more mind magic than just what I'm learning."

"I think Professor Snape's building a much stronger foundation by teaching you the theory first," Hermione added.

"Well, he learned the first time, didn't he?" Ron replied, capturing one of his girlfriend's knights. His castle punted it off the side of the board.

Hermione hastily lost the game of chess ("What happened, Hermione? You were doing so good before!") and out came the _Prophet_ articles. Ron moved the board off the table, and they spread them out in front of them, so they could all be seen at once, and started rereading them, looking for some kind of connection.

"You know," she said finally, staring at the article she'd first shown Harry, the day he'd arrived at the Burrow. "What if this is all a distraction? What if they're doing something else that no one's even cared to notice because they're too busy in this crisis with all the dead patients?"

"But why would they use a hospital for a distraction?" Harry asked. "If they want a distraction, they can go attack any old clump of wizards in Hogsmeade or wherever. Why St. Mungo's?"

"I don't know," Hermione said, finally relinquishing the clipping to pick up another, shorter one. It detailed the deaths of three patients under intensive care for magical ailments and diseases. "It doesn't make much sense when you put it that way, I guess."

Ron had been silent a very long time, so it surprised them both when he spoke up. "What if they're using the attacks to cover up something they're doing in the hospital?"

A pause. "Like what?" Hermione looked like she was on the edge of her chair.

"Like..." Ron was rubbing his finger in a crescent created by a burn on the table. "I don't know. Maybe they're stealing stuff."

"Do they even think about taking inventory, when everything's smashed up and they have to deal with people being dead, too?" Harry asked.

Ron stared at the wood grain, exactly between two articles. "What do they have that's valuable in a wizard hospital?"

"What do they have in the infirmary?" Harry asked.

"Medicine," said Ron.

"Duh," said Hermione. "Potions." She wrung her hands compulsively. "Potions for curing people, very sophisticated potions, not things that are easy to make. They don't have a potionmaker, do they? They haven't for some time now."

The three of them shared an anxious look, then distractedly eyed a third-year who was retiring to his dorm, passing close to their table. Ron broke into a yawn.

"Okay. Well, there weren't any attacks yesterday or today, so we can wait until the morning to tell Dumbledore, right?" Harry asked, a little nervously, as beside him his friend stretched.

"That should be okay," said Hermione, biting her lip. Harry knew that if anything happened overnight, she would feel partially responsible for not telling anyone.

They retreated to some other, less important topics for a few minutes. Soon after that, Ron retreated to the dorms to sleep, saying goodnight to his friends.

"So," Hermione began, as soon as the dorm room door had clicked shut. The common room seemed considerably emptier now. "Anything exciting happen during Occlumency that you couldn't mention in front of Ron?"

"I said," Harry told her. "It was just a big lecture."

"That's all?" She looked disappointed.

"Yeah." Harry made a face. "And, okay, I had to go and be stupid right before I left. I told him I liked his hair."

"What'd he say?"

"He said he'd consider it, and thanks for the suggestion."

"No." Hermione looked incredulous. "You sure you didn't mishear him? Maybe he said, 'I'll consider it, and fifty points from Gryffindor.'"

"No, I heard him right, we were practically ten centimeters apart."

"That's weird, Harry," Hermione said, seriously. "Something's really wrong with Professor Snape. We should tell Professor Dumbledore."

"I don't know," said Harry, scratching the back of his neck. "It's not like he's really doing anything. I mean, anything wrong."

"Alright," she said, hesitantly. "But I'm kind of worried. If anything too weird happens, we need to tell him, okay?"

"Okay," agreed Harry. Soon he went up to bed, too, trying to suppress images of tall, pale men in swishy robes cupping his face with long, thin fingers. Instead he tried to replace the image with something female: long, shiny blonde hair, his fingers running through it gently. It was safe enough, wasn't it?

Sometime during the night, though, the hair he was dreaming about became wispy and black.

**-point of view switch-**

Hermione wasn't one to go about breaking rules. Being a prefect, she scolded those who did, even her best friends. But tonight, she wouldn't be able to clear her conscious unless she told the headmaster about their suspicions. So she left the tower, even though it was well past curfew, and walked speedily and silently to the hallway which led to his office, and was relieved to find him exiting at that exact moment.

"Good evening, Miss Granger," he greeted her cheerily, standing thoughtfully before the closed entrance to his tower, in light blue pajamas covered with owl motifs. "I'm trying to think of a new password. Any suggestions?"

No scolding for being out after curfew. No questions asked. She smiled. Harry had mentioned Professor Dumbledore's sweets passwords before. She remembered the sugarless, individually-wrapped ones her parents used to give out at the office, the ones she'd steal from the little box by the register and hide under the desk, quietly opening and gorging on them. "When I was little, I really liked lifesavers." She'd roll the circles around on her tongue until they melted away.

"Lifesavers it is!" said Dumbledore, and the entry to his office opened up, and he led her inside. She felt a little guilty for making him go back up into his office, which he'd obviously just left, but he didn't seem to mind. He was even humming a little as they circled their way up to the top. When they got there, they went through his door and each sat on squishy chairs. "What's concerning you?"

Hermione set the pile of newspaper clippings the trio had collected onto his desk. His smile vanished, and he glanced through them. "We've been following the St. Mungo's attacks for some time. Ron, Harry, and I, I mean." She cleared her throat a little. "We've been trying to figure them out for ages. And I think tonight we may have come up with why the Death Eaters keep attacking."

"Go on," he encouraged her.

"We believe that the attacks are just to shift the focus of the news coverage. We think they're stealing medicinal potions from the hospital."

The headmaster was silent for a moment. "I do believe they have been missing potions when they clean up the wards that keep getting destroyed. They were hoping that the missing potions were simply destroyed in the onslaught, but do realize that they were probably stolen."

"They already knew?" Hermione asked. Her cheeks burned. It had been obvious to everyone else. They'd spent more than a month trying to solve what had already been discovered. "Why wasn't it written about in the _Prophet_?"

"So the Death Eaters don't know we're on to them, I imagine."

"Well, it doesn't really seem to be doing much good," she said, still feeling shameful.

"No," he said, staring off into space for a moment. "No, it doesn't." He ran a hand through his beard. "They are planning to ship the more difficult to produce medicines to safer places, however."

Nothing, for a few moments.

"Was that all?"

Hermione nodded, thinking of her conversation with Harry. It wasn't like he told her she _couldn't_ tell the headmaster. "No, actually."

"Yes?"

"Well, it's just that Professor Snape's been acting rather strangely lately."

For the first time since she'd mentioned St. Mungo's, the sparkle seemed to return to his eyes. "Oh?"

"He... didn't seem well during our first few classes. He kept stumbling, and looked very stressed. And recently..." she trailed off for a moment. Recently, what? He'd been acting ready to seduce her best friend? She supposed it hadn't progressed nearly that far, but from the way Harry described his Occlumency lessons... "Recently, he's seemed to be acting... differently with Harry."

"How so?"

Dumbledore wasn't making this easy at all.

"Um. I don't know. More civilly." She supposed that was the easiest way to explain it. And it safely hid away the other half of the issue, the part Harry seemed to be stressing about, the reasoning behind it all.

The headmaster was silent for a long while. "I believe that, given the current situation, that is understandable."

She blinked. "What?" She didn't understand. "What current situation?"

He smiled. "Severus has recently had a... change of heart. He discovered something very personal and now must decide whether he will accept it or fight it."

Hermione had so many more questions, but like the model student she was, she nodded, in respect for her professor's privacy. She stood, and Dumbledore did, too.

"Good night, Miss Granger."

"Good night."

**-point of view switch-**

Before he awoke, he was seated at the front, center desk in the Potions classroom. He was the only student there, and Snape was out of his line of vision–behind him, that's where the man was, leaning over him, breathing in his ear. His essay was a paragraph short of completion. Harry's breath hitched.

"Hardly satisfactory," Snape was saying. "Though your work rarely is."

Harry shuddered, feeling the lightest brush of the man's long hair against his neck. Then he felt fingers: long, thin, pale, turning his face to the side. Soft lips, feather kisses. Harry whimpered into the kiss.

That was when he woke up. His pajamas felt uncomfortable on his skin, which was dotted with goose bumps, the hairs on his arms standing up. He'd pushed his blanket off during the night, but now he wrapped it around himself, tightly, and hugged the excess to his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to imagine he was kissing Snape, just for a few minutes longer.

Kissing Snape...

He jumped, the mattress below him squeaking as he threw his arms apart, relinquishing his pretend hold on his Potions Master. What was he thinking? _I'm not gay_, he reminded himself, but felt a twinge in his chest as he thought it. He didn't even believe himself. He tried to think about Cho, her eyes crinkling as she smiled, the face he had fancied himself to be in love with for so long cracking into a grin. _There we go_.

Her thick-lipped smile thinned, her eyes darkened, her face became the slightest bit slimmer and paler. _Damnit_.

It was only seven-thirty. Breakfast wouldn't start for half an hour, but Harry threw back the comforter, passed the beds of his sleeping dorm mates, and went down to the common room, still in pajamas. Hermione was awake, as he'd suspected. He sat himself on the couch facing her. She was reading from a book about spellwork in medicine. "Good morning, Harry."

"'Morning," he said. He fidgeted.

"I have–" he started, just as Hermione said, "Last night–"; he gestured for her to start, smiling nonchalantly.

"Last night, after you went to bed, I went to talk to Professor Dumbledore." When Harry didn't say anything, she went on. "I told him about what we realized about St. Mungo's and he said it's true, they were stealing potions. And they are doing something about it, just not fast enough."

"What are they doing?"

"Just moving some of the potions to more stable locations. They haven't published anything in the _Prophet_ about it at all." She looked down at the paper in her lap, face apologetic. "And I mentioned how Snape was acting strange."

"And?" Harry felt something weird, like his insides were being drained out. It only lasted a second, though. It wasn't anything, really.

"Professor Dumbledore said... oh, I forget what he said exactly. Something about how Snape found something out that he could either accept or fight. He had a 'change of heart,' I think he said." She shrugged. "What were you going to say?"

_I have a problem_. Harry smiled at her again. _I think I'm gay_. "Oh, nothing," he lied. '_A change of heart_?' he wondered for a moment.

"Alright," she said, and picked up the news again. "Nothing again today. I guess that's good."

"Guess so," agreed Harry. His mind was preoccupied now, thinking about Snape, wondering what it could possibly be that Snape had learned. It would be something he wouldn't like, something would try with all his might to argue with before giving in, because that's probably what Dumbledore wanted. Something involving himself, judging by the way the man was acting. He really had no idea. Unless the Slytherin had decided he was gay, but the thought was really quite stupid. He was intimidating. Cold. The idea of Snape being gay, too, was similar to the idea of Dudley suddenly wizening up, doing his homework, and graduating valedictorian. Laughable. Unlikely. All but impossible.

_Gay, too_. Harry grimaced. He really didn't know what to do. Hermione would just reassure him that it was perfectly normal, what was there to sweat about? _You're still Harry_, she'd tell him.

Maybe this Snape thing was just a phase. Maybe in two weeks he'd think back and question his stupidity, wonder what the hell had been wrong with him. Really, what good would a–he scowled at the sound of the word–_crush_ on any Professor, especially Professor _Snape_, do? Absolutely nothing. And if the man found out...

_Oh, that would be hell_.

"You sure nothing's on your mind, Harry?" Hermione asked, looking concerned, and Harry realized his face was pinched into a sour look.

"Er." _No, actually, I don't know what to do about my crush on our potions professor_. _Any suggestions_? "Yes, I'm sure."


End file.
